


The White and the Grey

by crossingwinter



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Beta Pairing: Bran Stark/Meera Reed, Beta Pairing: Shireen Baratheon/Devan Seaworth, Beta pairing: Sansa Stark/Edric Dayne, Denial Of Who Will Probably Die AU, F/M, I outsmutted myself with this one tbh, Kingsguard AU, Post-Canon, Wishful Thinking AU, like damn it's real smutty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2016-09-09
Packaged: 2018-07-28 21:38:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 42,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7657654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Is he there?</em>
</p><p>She doesn’t know.  She hadn’t known how to ask, and no one had been subtle enough to convey <em>which</em> of Shireen’s seven would be coming north with her.  <em>Not all of Robert’s seven came when I was a girl</em>, she had told herself as soon as she knew that Shireen was coming north.  She’d done it so as not to get her hopes up.  She’d been sure—well, fairly sure—that it would be far worse assuming Gendry would be riding north with his queen only to be devastated in finding he’d stayed to guard her Hand in King’s Landing than it would be to assume he may not be there and see him when he arrived.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Ages before you ask: Arya - Mid-late twenties; Gendry - early thirties. Calculate everyone else accordingly.

They’ve been calling him Bran the Rebuilder, and Arya can’t help but smile every time she hears it.

Bran brushes the words off. “I didn’t lift a single stone,” he complains. “I didn’t even draw the _plans_.” But slowly over the course of ten years, Winterfell has risen again.

It is high summer, and Arya closes her eyes for a moment. It is hot, and dry today, though she is sure that thunderstorms will sweep across the moors later in the afternoon if the clouds overhead are anything to judge by. “Best finish up before they do,” she murmurs.

“What’s that, m’lady?” Stevron asks, and Arya smiles at him.

“Storms later,” she says and nods her head towards the east.

“Aye. The storm queen brings them north, I’ll warrant. Like her uncle before her.”

Arya shakes her head. “It wasn’t storming when King Robert came to Winterfell.” There’d been summer snows on some days while he’d been there, but for the most part, the skies had been clear.

“Of course, m’lady,” Stevron says. “You’d know better than I.”

She gives him a smile. “There are still no delays?” she asked.

“No m’lady.”

“Good.” She nudges Black Aly with her foot and the horse whickers as she begins to walk.

Arya rounds the castle walls. They are high—so very high, and as she looks up, it’s as though she can imagine Bran running along them the way he had when they’d been children. The stone is newer—a darker grey, fresh from the earth, and there are stonemasons working at the parapets. She reaches a hand out and brushes it against the castle.

The lichyard is full of people when she rides into it. There are men taking down scaffolds, women weaving hay dolls to decorate the hall indoors, and in the center of it all, Rickon, who is sparring with Bryan Lake.

Gone are the days when Rickon looks like anything close to the little boy who’d been frightened of Shaggydog when father had first brought the wolf pups home. He is tall—taller than she is, or than Bran is. _He may be as tall as Brienne, or the Hound,_ Arya thinks, then bites her lip. No, he is not so tall as either of them, but he may be as tall as Gendry.

Rickon catches her eye and smiles, his grin lighting up his long face, and Bryan, seeing his foe distracted, takes the opportunity to thwack Rickon across the leg with the flat of his blade.

“Ow!” Rickon yells, stumbling, and he reminds Arya of a puppy—long limbs but not quite the coordination he needs. _Smooth as silk,_ Arya hears in the back of her mind. _Quick as a cat._ Rickon had never trained to be a water dancer, though.

“Could you see them?” Rickon asks as she passes him.

“Not yet,” Arya says. “Their outriders said afternoon.”

Rickon makes a face before turning back to Bryan and raising his sword again. “I want them to come sooner than that,” he says.

“Impatient?” teases Arya.

“Aren’t you? Don’t you want to see Sansa?”

“Of course I do,” Arya says automatically. She’s not seen Sansa in years, not since she went south to marry Ned. “I just learned to balance my impatience a long time ago.” She reaches up and rubs Rickon’s hair the way Jon used to rub hers. Rickon’s face scrunches and he dodges away from her touch and Arya rolls her eyes. Rickon rolls his right back.

“Come on,” Bryan Lake calls, and Arya laughs.

“Wear yourselves out,” she tells him, and continues across the lichyard.

She goes into the keep to look for Bran, her feet taking her into the main hall with the great seat her father had once sat on. Bran’s not there—he’s probably resting upstairs. It will be a long afternoon for him. Bran sleeps very little and can grow restive in the afternoon, which won’t serve if he must also play a royal host to Shireen. She crosses through the great hall and up a back set of stairs up two floors until she reaches the rooms that Bran and Meera share. The door to their bedchamber is closed and Arya raises a hand to knock before she hears a sigh from the other side and knows she’ll be intruding. Her lips twitch, half in sadness, half in loneliness.

She shakes herself, trying to rid herself of the thought, but it doesn’t quite work. _Stop it,_ she commands herself. _Stop it, you know you’re better off._ She’d learned her lesson about longing for someone to hold in her arms.

She hears Meera sighing again on the other side of the door and remembers that she is still standing there, and hurries away. She pushes open her own bedroom door, and goes to the window. There is no sign of them in the distance—not yet.

 _The outriders said they’re nearly here,_ she thinks. Sansa, and Queen Shireen and her court. Queen Shireen and her kingsguard.

She must not expect that he’ll be there. She must not. She’ll only be disappointed if he remained behind in King’s Landing with Ser Davos.

_But he will have come. He will have. Because it’s me and…_

She hadn’t been enough to make him stay North at the war’s end when Queen Shireen had wanted him to come south with her. She hadn’t been enough when he’d sworn his sword to the Brotherhood in the first place. _But this is different._

_Isn’t it?_

She stares out over the moors, and closes her eyes and tries not to hope.

* * *

“Is it as you remember, my love?”

Lady Stark nods, and a smile spreads across her face, lighting her blue eyes. She reaches out a hand and Lord Dayne takes it in his, bringing it to his lips. “Peace suits the North,” he says and Gendry pulls his reins up, slowing Water’s pace just a hair so that he is riding along side Steffon Seaworth instead.

“Do you know how much longer until we reach Winterfell?” Steffon asks. He is a clever man. His eyes are the sort of sharp eyes that have been on the horizon all morning, as much as Gendry’s have been, looking for a glimpse of the great castle. Steffon hasn’t seen it before, though. He’d only been a boy when the war was fought, safe in his mother’s arms far to the south.

“Not long,” Gendry shrugs.

“Helpful,” Steffon says. He kicks his horse up so that he nears Lady Sansa. “My Lady, do you know how much longer it will be?”

“Not long now,” Sansa says, turning to him with a smile. “Not too long.”

The North goes on forever and ever, and if Gendry had his way, he’d ride ahead like one of the outriders just to get through it faster. But his white cloak keeps him close to Shireen, and her babe Robert, all of two, so he does not. _I could_ , he thinks. If Aelgenth were here, she’d tell him to. He is not, after all, the Lord Commander. That honor falls on his brother Edric, who was at least acknowledged by Robert before he’d died. Edric rides to the left of the queen, and Gendry sighs and pulls his reins again so that Water falls into pace beside the king consort.

“One would almost think you didn’t wish to reach Winterfell,” teases King Devan. “Surely you’re not afraid of the castle.”

It won’t be covered in corpses come to life now, nor will it be almost in ruins. It’s strong now, the heart of the North, and Gendry rolls his eyes. “I’m not afraid,” he says, but even as he does his stomach lurches, and for the second time, he wishes Aelgenth were there. If she were, he’d surely not be half so nervous.

 _She’s_ there. And he’s not heard from her in near enough five years—not since Lady Sansa had come south with the gift of a white velvet doublet that Arya had had made for him in honor of his being named one of Shireen’s seven. “ _To match your cloak,”_ had been Lady Sansa’s comment. Gendry had worn it only once in summer and had been so hot that his skin had near enough melted off, so he saved it for winter. Winter always made him think of Arya anyway. _Winter is coming_ , he’d heard one too many times during the war, as if winter hadn’t bloody well been there already, so how could he not.

His stomach twists again. He’s wearing the doublet now. It’s the right weather for it now, the air cool, but the sun warm. He hopes she’ll remember. Surely she will.

If she’d written him letters, he’d have learned to read. But she’d known he could not read, so she’d never written him. Sometimes Lady Sansa would convey a greeting, and he’d ask her to convey one back, but he was never sure if she did. Lady Sansa was gracious enough, but to Gendry her courtesies were a mask, and Gendry had never known how to read what lay behind them. He’d never felt the need to, either. Arya had worn masks too, and plenty of them. Gendry had seen every one of them, but unlike her sister, he had been well practiced in Arya’s masks and could read them perfectly. It hadn’t been hard. Her heart had always been in each one. But it is not the same with Lady Sansa. At least not to Gendry. Perhaps Lord Dayne finds it different. He hopes so. Lord Dayne is her husband, after all. Even if he doesn’t know them very well, they seem too happy to be the type of husband and wife to keep things from one another.

“Of course you’re not afraid.” King Devan is smiling, half-kindly, half-teasingly. Gendry glares at him, which only makes King Devan laugh even more.

“It’s different without the snows, isn’t it?” Queen Shireen asks, leaning forward slightly atop Thunder, her blue eyes locking with Gendry.

“Aye,” he agrees.

“I wonder that it took them so long to complete rebuilding the castle,” King Devan adds.   “It was not so destroyed as the Red Keep, yet our repairs were finished long ago.”

“We’ve more in taxes,” Shireen responds immediately, her queenly voice returning to her. “Westerland gold, and the wealth of the Reach. The North has pinecones.”

That makes Gendry snort. Arya had thrown pinecones at him as they’d waded through snow near as high as his waist. His stomach twists _again_ , and he curses himself. _I am a knight of the kingsguard,_ he berates himself. _I have nothing to fear in Arya Stark._

 _Except the fear that she doesn’t care—not truly. Except that she’s forgotten about me._ He hates that little voice inside his head. If there’s one thing he can be confident of, it is that Arya Stark has not forgotten him.

 _She is not forgetful,_ he thinks. _She never forgets anything._ The look in her eyes when she remembered some things…

“There!” he hears Steffon cry, and true enough, _there._

It rises out of the green hill like a great stone crown. There is no bloodstained snow around its curtain walls, there is no wall of corpses, no scent of dead flesh. There is green and flowers, and fields full of summer hay.

 _Wintefell._ And then, in the voice of a ten-year-old girl, shouting as she charged into battle, _Winterfell._

* * *

 

Arya stares out the window. She can’t look away, not until she sees the glint of the sunlight off of helmets and armor, or the fluttering of Shireen’s banners in the wind.

If the morning had been full of activity, and the evening would be as well with the feast prepared, then Arya should be glad of this quiet moment in the day to gather her thoughts and to rest herself. But she’s staring at the window, her hands resting on the sill and the thoughts she’d not let herself think for ages now bubble forward.

_Is he there?_

She doesn’t know. She hadn’t known how to ask, and no one had been subtle enough to convey _which_ of Shireen’s seven would be coming north with her. _Not all of Robert’s seven came when I was a girl,_ she had told herself as soon as she knew that Shireen was coming north. She’d done it so as not to get her hopes up. She’d been sure—well, fairly sure—that it would be far worse assuming Gendry would be riding north with his queen only to be devastated in finding he’d stayed to guard her Hand in King’s Landing than it would be to assume he may not be there and see him when he arrived.

And she so wants him to come. She closes her eyes for just a moment.

She loves her brothers—she truly does. Rickon is full of energy, and has a loud laugh, and Bran understands her quite as well as he understands anything. Neither of them is Jon, of course, but Jon’s been dead for years now, and it doesn’t serve to compare them to him. _I must not dwell on ghosts._ Hard as it was, when the ghosts sometimes wore her mother’s rent face. “ _If I look back, I am lost,_ ” Daenerys had once told her and Arya sometimes tried it, when she was at her saddest and loneliest.

 _I’m not lonely,_ she told herself firmly. She has her brothers.

But it will be—would be sweet to see Gendry again.

Gendry had always been different, someone quite unlike anyone else who mattered. He’d trusted her from the beginning, and…and…

And he’d left her. He’d left her twice.

First with the brotherhood, when he took his vows, and then again when he went south with Shireen.

If Arya hadn’t been mourning Jon so deeply, she’d have wondered which had hurt more, Gendry’s departure or Olyvar’s. _Another pair I shouldn’t compare,_ she thinks.

Olyvar had been her first love, and when he’d sailed across the Narrow Sea and left her behind she’d felt as small as a mouse in Harrenhal again. And when Gendry had left... _We’d just won the war, but Jon was dead. Nothing mattered because Jon was dead._

She chewed her lip. Gendry had understood that, hadn’t he? That she’d miss him, of course she’d miss him, how could she not, but her brother was dead for good, and there was only so much heartbreak a girl could take.

 _I want to see him again,_ she thinks. She’d tried not to dwell on it—how much she missed him, how much she longed to see him again. She had known deep down in her soul that once she was back in Winterfell, she’d never leave it, not ever. She’d have Bran’s sons bury her like Aunt Lyanna in the crypts, right beside Jon. And if she was never to leave Winterfell, and Gendry was to remain in the south at Shireen’s side, well…

 _Please have come,_ she thinks. _Please._

She…she…

She’s not sure what she wants. Part of her thinks it’s that she never had a proper chance to say goodbye. Part of her thinks it’s that she wants to see one of her dearest friends again, plain and simple. And part of her…she doesn’t know. Neither of those seems to fit half so well as remembering how much it had hurt when Olyvar had left, but still thinking “ _It’s better than when Gendry did._ ”

* * *

 

As they approach the castle, Sansa and Ned pick up speed, and Shireen pulls on Thunder’s reins again. “Let her have her reunion,” she says when Ser Edric looks at her confused. “She’s not seen her brothers and sister in five years. Let them greet one another before they must play host to me.”

“Thoughtful of you,” Edric says, and Shireen smiles at him.

“I am the thoughtful queen,” Shireen says and she looks over her shoulder at the wheelhouse. Her ladies are within, and little Robert who prefers the wheelhouse to hours on horseback. Gendry knows that the queen would prefer to ride in it as well, but she knows she must ride at the head of her host. Lady Sansa had been in the wheelhouse until they reached the wide moors, and then she’d taken to horseback as well.

Gendry shifts in his saddle, and Shireen looks at him. “Ride with them,” she tells him.

“I don’t have to,” he says gruffly.

“Yes, but you want to. Ride with them.”

“I don’t want to,” he says.

“Perhaps not for their company, but go. Your queen commands it.”

She likes doing that, Shireen. He knows she does not mean it, or at least, she’s not offended when he does not take well to the command, for Gendry has never taken well to command. But Gendry sighs. Lady Sansa and Lord Ned are already much farther ahead, as is Steffon Seaworth. _Go on,_ he tells himself. _You’ve nothing to be frightened of._

_It’s only Arya._

As if he hadn’t spent nigh on a year in that dratted inn hoping she’d prance back in. As if he’d not forged Needle back together when it had snapped, even though it was too small for her hand, but her heart had been as broken as the pieces, as though…

 _Go on, Ser Gendry,_ he imagines Aelgenth telling him, and that settles him.

He kicks Water and the horse lurches forward, and Gendry rides along the side of the column until he reaches Lady Sansa again.

“Does the queen want something?” Ned Dayne asks, and Gendry shakes his head.

“No, she bade me ride ahead,” Gendry says. It’s not a lie, and Lady Sansa glances at him, and smiles gently.

“She’ll be glad to see you, I’m sure of it. She’s never one to forget her friends.”

Gendry remembers her shouting about a butcher’s boy and screaming for the Hound to die. He remembers nights pulling a too-thin cloak around him. He remembers her smile, and insistence about the side of the trees that moss grows on.

He wants to believe Lady Sansa. He wants to believe his own head. _If Aelgenth were here, I’d have more faith._ He felt groundless without the priestess, just as once he’d felt groundless without Arya.

He imagines Arya not recognizing him, or not greeting him, and he feels like a moody boy again.

* * *

 

She hears Rickon on the stairs. He has a distinctive step, even if you’re not Arya who learns the sound of someone’s stride. She hears him pound on Bran’s door. “They’re nearly here,” he calls through the wood paneling, and then moves down the hallway. Arya opens her door before he has the chance to knock, and finds him looking quite surprised.

“Oh,” he says, blinking. He looks down at her, then smiles. “I always forget you look pretty in dresses.”

“Thanks,” Arya says dryly, and he flushes.

“That’s not what I meant,” he adds, but Arya rolls her eyes.

“Don’t dig the grave any deeper, Rickon.” She does her best not to sound too bitter about it. His ears are turning pink the way they do when he’s truly embarrassed. “But I take it I look nice? Not too wild? As befits a princess of Winterfell.”

“Yes,” he says, sounding relieved that she’s not pressing him too hard. “I like the grey,” he adds. Arya gives him a once-over. “It matches your eyes.”

“You need to change,” she says. “You’re sweaty.”

“I know, I’m going,” he says.

“And brush your hair!” Arya calls after him. Only Rickon would make her sound like her mother. She shakes her head as the door to Bran and Meera’s bedchamber swings open, and Meera steps out in a long gown of forest green. She looks nice, Arya thinks, though like Arya, it’s odd to see her in skirts. Her hair is braided simply, and there’s a nice flush to her cheeks.

“Did Rickon send them up?” Meera asks.

“I don’t think so,” Arya responds, and Rickon calls, “Sorry!” from down the hall. Arya snorts, and calls, “Tom!”

“Coming m’lady!” and Tom and Marvyn lumber up the steps. Meera steps aside and they go into the bedchamber and moments later, Bran appears carried between them on his chair.

“You look nice,” he says, smiling. His beard is newly trimmed, and his hair sits neatly beneath the crown on his head.

“We must put our best foot forward,” Arya says, shrugging. “I’ll save the trousers for tomorrow.”

“I doubt Shireen would mind.” _It’s not Shireen I’m worried about._ Sansa wouldn’t say anything, but her hands would twitch.

Arya loops her arms through Meera’s and they follow Tom and Marvyn and Bran down the stairs. It’s slow going, and Rickon catches them up by the time they’ve reached the bottom, eyes still bright from his exercise. His hair has not been combed, and Arya can’t quite bring herself to shake her head.

She stands next to Bran in the lichyard, and it’s like she’s nine again. Nine, except it’s Sansa coming, not Cersei, and Jon’s dead, and mother and father.

Arya feels Bran reach for her hand, and she squeezes it gently as the first of the horses come through the castle gates, and Sansa and Ned ride forward. Ned dismounts with a flourish of his purple cloak, and Dickon takes the reins of his horse from him as he goes and helps Sansa dismount. Her eyes are bright and…

There is a slight bulge to her belly. Not large, but enough to make her skirts protrude a little more than they usually would.

“You didn’t tell us!” Arya blurts out before Sansa even has the chance to open her mouth.

Sansa’s eyes don’t match the smile on her face. “Well, I wanted it to be a surprise.” There’s something odd to her voice, too, and now that Arya looks more closely, she sees the smile on her sister’s face is tight. Sansa bends down and kisses Bran’s cheek.

“I’ve missed you,” he whispers to her, and she crouches down so they are eye to eye. “I don’t like you being so far away.”

“I know,” she responds gently, and it’s as if the rest of them aren’t there. _Bran always was her favorite brother,_ Arya thinks. She looks at Ned, who is hovering behind Sansa.

“Welcome to Winterfell again, my lord,” she says.

“Thank you, my lady,” he says, and he gives her a faint, if slightly somber, smile.

“And congratulations, I may add,” she says, and he flushes.

“Thank you,” he says. “We’re very pleased.” Sansa steps aside, and Ned bows to Bran. “Your Grace.” He straightens and takes Meera’s proffered hand and presses his lips to it. “As fair as ever, Your Grace.” The comment catches Meera off-guard, and Bran begins to say, “I trust the journey was not too—” when Arya sees, out of the corner of her eye, a flurry of white, and she turns her head away from her sister and goodbrother.

There is a knight of the kingsguard there—a tall one too, with dark hair. He’s on the far side of his horse, not looking at her. _It could be Edric Storm,_ she thinks, but her heart is pounding with excitement.

A young man—about Rickon’s age, or maybe a bit older, with dark hair and soft brown eyes is walking forward nervously. He looks as though he hadn’t quite thought through his arrival, as though he’d ridden ahead and is realizing only now why Sansa had done so. _Edric Storm wouldn’t ride ahead just like that—it has to be…_

“Your Grace,” Ned says, “This is Steffon Seaworth, Lord Davos’ youngest son. I don’t believe you will have met him.”

“I have not. Any son of Lord Davos is welcome in Winterfell,” Bran says, and somewhere in the distance, Arya hears Rickon ask excitedly, “Your father is well, I trust?”

She hears a rumble of thunder in the distance as the horse is led away, and Gendry turns around and there’s hardly any air in the courtyard, he’s truly there. Arya feels her eyes prickle, feels her face soften in a smile, her lips parting as if to speak, but she’s not sure what to say. He’s _here_ , he came.

She can imagine what she must look like. A Kindly Man had once told her to command her face for it was her servant, but either she was a poor master, or the servant was uppity because every muscle seems to be moving of its own accord and Gendry—

His face looks rather like what she must imagine hers does.

* * *

When he’d been a boy, barely a man grown, every night before he’d gone to bed, he’d prayed before his nightfires, prayed to the Red God, because the Red God was real, and worked his magic in a way Gendry had never seen the Seven do. He’d prayed every night, silently staring into the flames, willing them to show her to him, to know she was safe.

He’d forgotten that. He doesn’t know how he’d forgotten that, but he had.

She doesn’t greet him, but her eyes are so bright that for a moment he’s a boy again. This was what he’d prayed for all those nights, this right here. Arya standing in front of him, her eyes glistening with joy at the very sight of him. Instead, he’d gotten her covered in dirt, and blood, her eyes dull because she’d seen her mother before he could warn her. But now—

His heart is pounding in his chest, pounding as if he’d run the whole way to Winterfell instead of ridden to the castle on horseback. He can’t look away from her, not even when she looks away from him to say something to Lady Sansa, or to her brother. He can’t.

The clatter of hooves and the rattle of the wheelhouse pulling through the castle’s gates are what shake him. He’s not Gendry the bastard blacksmith of Flea Bottom anymore, he’s Ser Gendry of Queen Shireen’s kingsguard, and he rests his hand on the sword at his hip and stands aside, looking around the castle, doing his best to put Arya from his mind.

 _You’re not a boy anymore,_ he reminds himself. And then, unhelpfully, he thinks, _And she’s not a girl._

He glances back at her as Shireen dismounts from her horse, and she and King Devan approach Bran Stark in his chair. She’s definitely not a little girl any longer. She’s long of leg, and her dress is belted around her middle in just a way that makes him notice the curve of her waist. _You are a knight of the kingsguard,_ he chides himself, his eyes snapping back to Shireen. _Remember that. All of that is done._ That was precisely why things had ended with Aelgenth.

_But Arya is not Aelgenth._

“It warms my heart to see Winterfell whole again, Bran,” Shireen is saying, and Gendry focuses on every word coming from her mouth. It’s either that, or look at Arya. How could he have been worried she would forget him when it’s clear that he’s forgotten what it’s like to be near her?

Except it’s not the same now. It’s different, it’s—

“I am glad you see it as it should have been,” Bran says. “Welcome, Shireen. Welcome, Devan.” He kisses Shireen’s hand, and Devan bows and kisses Meera’s hand. “And is that…” his voice trails away and he smiles at the prince in his nursemaid’s arms.

“Robert,” Shireen says. “He is quite as fierce as his namesake.”

“I should hope so,” Bran smiles, and reaches out a hand to caress the boy’s face. “He has your look.”

“A true Baratheon,” Arya agrees, and she casts a glance at Gendry. _I’m not,_ he thinks automatically. _But that never mattered to her._ And he can see it doesn’t now. It makes his chest swell with pride, even as guilt floods him. _It is not Arya I must impress, it is Shireen. She is my cousin, she is my queen._

And yet in ten years, he’d never felt so alert.

Arya had always had a way of doing that, though. Because for all Shireen was his queen, and his cousin, and for all that Aelgenth was his dearest friend, Arya was _Arya_.

And she is standing there, smiling at him, sharing a look that says, _I know who your father is, and that is so much less important than you are._

He doubted anyone had ever given Edric Storm that look.

“But you’ll be exhausted from your ride,” Queen Meera was saying. “Come inside and we’ll show you where you’ll be staying and you can freshen up, and rest before the feast tonight.”

The party moves inside, and Arya and Meera take the head of it, leading Shireen, Devan, and Edric inside. Sansa and Ned stay behind with Bran, whose chair is being lifted by two burly northmen.

 _I should go with my queen,_ he thinks. He looks after them, but they’ve already gone into the castle. Then he shakes himself. She is well enough in Ser Edric’s hands, and besides…he’d be lying to himself if he didn’t wish to go because Arya was there.

“Welcome back to Winterfell, Ser Gendry,” Bran says, smiling down at him from his chair.

“Thank you, your grace,” Gendry says. The two northmen begin to walk, and Gendry falls into step beside them. “It’s been too long.”

“Aye, it has been. But you’ve had your duties,” Bran says. He has. God only knows he has. He shivers, suddenly, and looks at Bran. _Is he still a god?_ Gendry wonders.

Aelgenth doesn’t believe that he is. “ _There is only one god, the lord of light,”_ he could hear her say. And yet he of all people knew what it was that Bran Stark was capable of.

“You’ve been well, I hope?” Bran asks him.

“Very well, your grace,” he responds quickly. “And you?”

“Quite. We’re glad you came. Arya was afraid you would remain in King’s Landing, though she didn’t say as much.”

 _How could I when she is here,_ part of him wants to say. Another part of him hates the thought. _It is not for her I came, it is Shireen, who I am sworn to serve and protect._

But he knows that’s a lie.

A chill rushes over him. If he had done this just for Arya, not for Shireen, what else had he lied to himself about? Lord have mercy, everything he’d lived for these past ten years—did none of it matter?

* * *

 

“Ser Gendry.” 

“How’d you know it was me?” he asked.  His voice is a rumble in his chest.  Arya wonders if it’s the same voice he’d had when he was sixteen.  She can’t remember.  It sounds the same, but then again, Bran is a man grown now and she still hears his boy’s voice when he speaks. Gendry’s voice had certainly never made her breath catch quite like that before.

“I just did.” _I knew you’d come find me._

It’s raining now, the clouds that had threatened in the morning had rolled in across the plains only an hour after Shireen’s party had arrived. She’d only barely seen Gendry, barely spoken to him since he had arrived, but she’d known he’d come find her. She’d known it from the way he had looked at her, from the fact that they’d spoken no words to one another at all.

There’s thunder rumbling in the distance, but Arya’s too agitated to be inside right now. She is sitting under the weirwood her father had once prayed at, that she and Bran had once climbed together, as if hoping the old tree and the Old Gods will calm her heart, which has not slowed since she first saw Gendry in the lichyard.

Gendry has rain in his hair.

“Never thought I’d see you in your white cloak,” she comments, looking at it, seeing it truly now. She’d forgotten about it so quickly in the yard. She’d hardly noticed anything but his face, and had had to force herself to pay attention to their guests. She’d not been able to say a word to him. There had been too many people around, and her heart had been so full in her chest.  

He looks down too, a chagrinned expression on his face. “Well, here it is,” he says. “Does it suit me?”

Arya opens her mouth to reply. She should say yes, it’s what he wants to hear, and what he deserves to hear, but she hears herself say, “Do they let you wear the bull helm with it?”

Gendry blinks at her. “I don’t still have it,” he says.

“You don’t?” The thought of that made her sad.

He shakes his head. “It wasn’t fitting for a knight of the kingsguard. So I gave it away.”

“To someone deserving, I hope.”

“Aye. To someone deserving.”

“A fitting exchange, then, for your cloak and vows, and white sword tower.”

Gendry nods, his face is serious, and there’s something in his eyes.

“What is it?” she asks him, and he swallows.

“It’s…it’s just,” his voice trails away and the corner of his lip twitches in a half-grimace. “It doesn’t matter.”

“What doesn’t matter?” she asks.   He’s standing over her now–so tall.  He’d always been tall, even when she’d been a stupid little girl.  Had his shoulders always been so broad? She can’t remember. Or maybe she can, but she sees them with a woman’s eyes now, not a child’s.

He doesn’t say a word. He’s watching her. She’s good at reading faces–always has been, but Gendry’s face is in shadow right now and she can’t quite make out his eyes.  “ _Eyes tell you all you need to know about a man_ ,” she remembers a waif telling her.  He’s got this odd look in his eyes, like he’s far away, and yet not far away. Not far away at all…

 _He looks like when Olyvar said goodbye,_ she thinks suddenly, and vividly she remembers Olyvar sitting up and shrugging into his shirt again, the taste of him still on her lips. “Gendry,” she whispers, and his eyes flicker. “It’s a great honor, to wear the white cloak,” she prompts, hoping. But he still doesn’t reply. “Or have you forgotten? Are you too bullheaded to remember?”

“Might have,” he mumbles, and Arya feels her mouth open in surprise. She’d been teasing, but he looks so serious.

“What does that mean?”  He just shakes his head, and Arya rolls her eyes.  “Really?  We were more to each other than that.”

“More than you know,” he whispers, and it might be the wind, and the humid coolness of the air, but goosebumps break out over Arya’s skin.  There’s something in his voice she’d not thought to hear.   Hadn’t hoped to? “But it’s no matter.  I can’t have it, can I?”

“Can’t have what?”

“Anything,” he says, tugging at the cloak as if he’s a child.

“You’re one of the greatest knights in the land, wearing that.”

“Funny…I don’t feel it.”

“What would you feel instead?”

“I don’t know.”

His words hang in the air, and he takes a shaky breath, looking at her, his blue eyes so very intense. _What does he want of me?_ Arya wonders. He’d always wanted her attention, and her care, and she’d given it readily. But now it seems like… _I can’t have it, can I? Anything._

Does he want her?

But he can’t—he’s Gendry, and he swore his vows, and besides, Arya had promised herself after Larence that there’d be no more of this, especially not with a friend.

But her mouth is so very dry when she looks at him. And she can’t look away, and gods she doesn’t understand what’s in his mind the way she might once have. Ten years hangs heavy between them. But she can’t look away, and can’t ignore the way her heart is beating so hard in her chest, so hard because he’s here, beating like a drum in her chest.

The rain patters on the ground of the godswood, on the surface of the hotsprings, the wind that blows and their breath.  But the loudest sound by far is Gendry unclasping the white cloak and letting it fall to the ground as he sits down at her side, and leans against the tree.

Arya reaches a hand out to pat his arm, and her hand finds velvet. _White velvet._

She can’t stop the smile from spreading across her face. “You wore it.” She’d not been able to see it properly from under his cloak in the lichyard.

“Aye. I did.”

“I’m glad,” she says, and she wants to smile, but she can’t. There are times for smiles, but now isn’t one of them, not when he’s looking at her like this. “I’m…I’m glad you remembered.”

“Wasn’t like to forget,” he says, and his voice is rough. “Did you think I’d forget you?”

“No,” she says quickly. “But, well…” she looks down at her hands, then casts a sideways glance at him. _What am I afraid of?_ Because she is, well, not afraid, but nervous. What is there to be nervous about? It’s _Gendry_ after all. “I didn’t know if it would fit you,” she finishes lamely. That’s not it at all, but it makes Gendry half-smile.

“It fits me well enough. I had to had it taken in a bit. I think you thought I was broader of shoulder than I am.”

“Well, I couldn’t very well ask,” she says.

“No,” he agrees. “You couldn’t. You remembered my height well enough, though, so that’s what matters. It might have caused some trouble if it hadn’t been long enough.”

“Your height is easy enough to remember,” Arya says, snorting.

“Oh?”

“Yes,” she says. She points to a tree across the hot spring from them. “You’re just taller than that branch. I remember you hitting your head.”

Gendry blinks. “There was a foot of snow on the ground.”

“I accounted for it.”

“And you didn’t know how long my legs were compared to my torso.”

“I just knew, all right?”

“Lucky guess,” he snorts.

Arya elbows him and he lets out a huff, and Arya grins up at him, but even as she does, the grin on his own face fades. His eyes are so serious—serious enough to be jarring, and in a way that Arya knows too well. _Eyes tell you all you need to know about a man_.

 _I should go,_ she thinks. _I swore I wasn’t doing this again. And he’s my friend, and he has vows that he’s sworn, and I can’t ruin it like that._

He’s her friend, her _friend_ , but Arya finds herself moving more closely to him. It’s just the two of them in the godswood. _Just us,_ she thinks, _The way it should have been._ But that was a stupid thought to have. Gendry had gone south, had gone and joined the Kingsguard, and…

But words are failing her. Her thoughts are failing her.

It’s the smell of him, so familiar, and everything smells stronger in the rain. Arya breathes him in, a smell of sweat and safety, breathes in the taste of his breath coming in shallow waves, his lips only inches from hers.

And when he kisses her, she forgets to breathe, because breathing doesn’t matter when his lips are on hers, chapped and insistent, his tongue probing into her mouth, his fingers weaving in her hair. What does air matter when she grips his doublet and pulls him closer to her, when she can feel the way his heart is beating in his chest, the way his pulse throbs in his neck under her fingers.

She moans into his mouth. It’s been so long since she’s been kissed, since she’s wanted to kiss anyone, and here he is, as like some ghost from her past come to life again. He’s real, and he’s here, and his breath tastes like safety. His hands are in her hair, rubbing her scalp, pulling her hair from its simple braid, and her hands rub along his jawline. The short beard on his face is soft, and she sucks on his lower lip between her teeth as she strokes her fingers over it gently, gently, as she would a cat.

His lips leave hers to trace a line along her jaw and she lets her hands drop down to his chest. He’s still wearing his velvet doublet—the doublet she’d given him and it’s so soft under her fingers and his chest…his chest is muscled underneath it—she can feel it. He’s always been strong, broad chested and powerful. He strikes an impressive figure in all of his whites, and for a moment, Arya pauses. _I shouldn’t do this—he’s sworn to Shireen._ But he doesn’t stop kissing her, his tongue twined with hers and his hands gripping her so tightly and Arya sinks into his kiss. Arya’s not afraid of him, not afraid of this. She can’t be. She should be—because it’s only ever ended in disaster, but she knows somehow it won’t. Not this time. Not when he’s Gendry. Gendry whose lips are now at her earlobe and whose got one hand clasping the back of her head through her hair and another that’s at the small of her back, pulling her as close to him as he can.

The wind blows. The leaves rustle, shedding droplets of water down on them, and Arya pauses and looks up. They are sitting beneath the weirwood, its red leaves trembling overhead. _The gods will know he breaks his vows_ , she thinks. _Bran will know._

But Bran won’t care. Gendry didn’t swear his vows to Bran, after all. Her eyes drift to the carved face on the tree trunk. It’s not _quite_ in front of them. Surely they’re out of its line of sight. It’s not like the gods have eyeballs that can twist and turn in any direction.

“Arya,” Gendry breathes, and she turns to look back at him. His eyes are lidded, his cheeks beneath his beard are flushed and his chapped lips are wet. He looks at her in wonder. He looks at her afraid, as if she’s going to run off, as if he’s unsure whether _he_ should be running off.

She kisses him hard, and pulls him close, so close. They’d been sitting side by side before, but Arya climbs on top of him now, feeling his bulge right where she wants to as she settles over him. She’d not realized how ripe she’d become, but sitting astride his cock now, all she can think is that she wants him. She wants him, she wants them, and not even the chill of the afternoon rain feels cold as she finds the buttons of his doublet and begins to undo them and Gendry—Gendry finds the ties of her bodice and pulls them loose as well with hands that are clearly less accustomed to taking off bodices than Arya’s are at taking off doublets. His velvet falls to the ground, and she pulls the white shirt he’s wearing underneath it up over his head, revealing thick dark hair on his chest and muscles unlike what she remembered as a girl. More of them, and larger, she thinks idly as she lets his shirt fall between them for just a moment. _White and grey,_ she thinks, staring at the shirt that rests between them on her skirts. _Stark colors. This isn’t wrong._

He’s still fumbling with her laces and part of her wants to help him, but a completely different part of her is in control. Her head falls forward and she kisses the crook of his neck, and he lets out a groan. She smiles into his skin, and her hands run through the dark hair on his chest.  

His hands at her laces still for a moment, and Arya feels her hips move, rocking back and forth over his, each movement sending a sweetness up through her, making her heart beat a little faster, a little hotter. Gendry lets out another groan, and then a frustrated whimper as his hands go to her laces again. He tugs at them, but they won’t seem to come loose at the bottom of her bodice, and Arya pulls away from him and leans back enough so that he can watch as she undoes them herself.

She doesn’t get very far. Her bodice isn’t even half-way off when Gendry tugs at her undershirt and to reveal one of her breasts. The damp air sends a chill across her skin and if her nipples weren’t already puckered from the two of them together, they’d pucker against the cold. But she doesn’t have time to think on that, though. Gendry doesn’t care that her bodice isn’t even off, he leans his head forward, sucking a kiss to the skin between her breasts before kissing his way to a nipple and it’s Arya’s turn to moan this time, truly moan because between her rocking hips and Gendry’s tongue against the soft skin and his hand against her other breast, kneading and caressing, her whole body is light.

She runs her hands up and down his chest, up and down his back, through his hair. She holds his head between her hands as he sucks at her breasts and her head falls back, her body arching towards him as he kisses and nips ever so gently. She rocks her hips back and forth, back and forth, focusing on just how sturdy his cock is between her legs, and as if of its own will, her hand drops down between them. She shifts her hips away from him, ignoring her own frustration for just a moment as she finds the laces to his breeches, and he’s moaning into her skin now, not really kissing her anymore, just leaving his face where it is as her hand pulls his cock out of his trousers.

It’s hard, and thick, but the skin is softer than the velvet of his doublet, softer than any fur she’s ever touched, and he goes very still as her hand pumps up and down his length for a moment, as the tips of her fingers circle the tip of his member. He trembles slightly, his breath uneven, and he tilts his head, his forehead resting between her breasts now, looking down at her hand pumping up and down along his shaft.

“God,” he whispers, then takes a deep breath. “God, Arya.” And he fumbles at her skirt, pushing it aside, and his shirt with it. If he’d tried to keep her laces in tact as he’d fumbled at her bodice, he makes no similar effort with her smallclothes, which he shoves aside unceremoniously and rubs thick, calloused fingers against her soaking slit. His touch is gentle, slow, fervent even, and Arya shifts her weight, canting her hips so that he can perhaps see a little more. The pace at which she was rubbing his cock slows to match the pace of his fingers running along her and he looks up at her, eyes looking at her in wonder, in curiosity. She kisses him, and she feels one of his fingers slide inside her and she sighs and pushes herself against his hand so that it goes into her as far as he can reach. His finger strokes the inside of her, and she squeezes his cock and, for good measure, brings her other hand down to cup at his balls. He is breathing hard now, and he slides another finger inside her.   She hisses happily, feeling herself stretch as he begins to pump his hand in and out of her, in and out. His hand is bigger than her own, his fingers longer and thicker and so much better inside her than her own fingers on nights when she is hot. So much better as he picks up speed and so does she. So much better as he shifts the angle of his hand and the heel of his palm finds the little nub at the top of her slit which makes her mewl. So much better as he gasps while she pumps at his cock, as he dribbles seed from the tip, and she feels his blood racing through the veins of that thick, throbbing—

He groans, and his fingers are gone, and his cock is gone as well, and so is everything. He shifts beneath her, tumbling her down onto his white cloak, and his eyes are almost wild as he locks his gaze to hers as he spreads her legs wide and she feels his tip at her entrance. She rocks her hips, taking the tip of him inside her and he grunts as he pushes the rest of the way in and she wraps her legs around his waist, wraps her arms around his neck, clings to him with every part of her and squeezes her cunt around his cock as he starts to thrust into her, their breath mingling with the sound of the rain.

Arya is full of him, so full she can barely breathe. Her body stretches around him, her heart swells at the feel of him, growing bigger and stronger with every thrust he makes. She kisses the base of his neck, his chest hair tickling her chin, and shifts her hips even more so that his thrusts go deeper and deeper. His cock strikes something deep inside her that sends a pain shooting up her, but even as he pulls away to thrust again she finds she likes the feel of it. And when he hits it again, she lets out a moan. And when it hits a third time it doesn’t hurt her at all. She shifts her hips again, and moves her legs this time so that her ankles are resting on Gendry’s shoulders as he pushes into her again, and again and again and again, and it washes over her like a wave, like the sea rolling and rolling for the first few hours you’re on a ship. Her whole body is light, except that part between her legs that is throbbing and her heart which must also be beating. She is hot and cold both at once and as if from far away she hears Gendry make a choking sound and his cock is gone from within her, and she feels wetness spurting onto the back of her thigh, trickling down towards her ass. She feels Gendry press a kiss to each of her ankles as he brings them both back down to the godswood, and spreads her skirt to cover her back up again, but she’s still floating. She reaches up a hand to find him and caresses his face.

“I missed you,” she whispers, and pulls his head down so that it rests between her breasts again, and she hears him mumble, “I missed you too.”


	2. Chapter 2

Her lips are bright red, and her silver eyes are shining with delight as she speaks with King Devan.  The last time that she had seen the king, she’d been barely more than a girl, and he’d been barely more than a boy, and they’d been frightened and hungry.  Now Devan has a pot-belly, and Arya… 

She doesn’t look as though she’d just fucked him in the godswood that afternoon.  Gendry’s watching her very closely, and you couldn’t tell by looking at her.  Her hair is in a neat braid—she’d rewoven it as he’d kissed her breasts again while lacing up her bodice—and she’s in a new dress—her other one having gotten muddy from her prayers. 

 _And my whites as well._ _Bloody soiled._  

“ _We’ll have them washed, don’t worry,_ ” Arya had said of his white cloak.  Fine silk it was, and should be, but he is wearing a different one tonight as he sat down the table, his eyes flitting to Arya whenever he could. 

 _I make poor company tonight,_ he thinks as he reached for his goblet of wine.  He is seated with one of the Starks’ retainers, a fine young man who was trying very hard to draw him into conversation.  As if he could possibly talk to anyone right now, not after what he’d done this afternoon.  _Besides, it’s_ _n_ _ot_ _like I’ve ever really made great company._  

Except for Arya.  Arya had always been able to make him smile.  And Aelgenth, who would know the heart of the matter before he’d be able to put words to it.  She was quick like Arya that way. 

He remembers the taste of Arya’s sweat, the softness of her skin drawing him in and in and he takes another sip of wine.  How different could they be?  Arya talking and laughing animatedly and full of life and energy after he’d been inside her only a few hours before and him… _as glum a bastard as ever._  

And why shouldn’t he be glum?  Why?  It had only taken her laughter, and a glimpse of her in skirts and where had his vows gone?  Had he not sworn them?  Was he not proud to wear the white?  And now this, now Arya, and he can’t even bring himself not to look at her, though by rights he should be too ashamed to do so.   

No, not as glum a bastard as ever—a more worthless, faithless bastard the world had never known. 

 _That’s not true,_ he could almost hear—god but he wished it was Aelgenth’s voice, but it was Arya’s.  _Ramsay Snow was worse by far than you._  

As if that made it better.   

He wishes he were far away from that hall, that he were in a quiet place where nothing had happened, and nothing mattered.  He wishes he could be seated with the king, instead of his brother Edric, but then again, Edric was always given higher honors than he, raised in Storm’s End by Renly Baratheon as he’d been.  He wishes Arya were beside him, holding his hand. He wishes that Aelgenth had come north with them and was seated at his side, for he’d not feel so weak if she were here, he’d have remembered his vows if she were here, but she’d remained in King’s Landing at Queen Shireen’s suggestion.  “ _The North remembers what happened when the last red priestess came and burned their sacred trees.”_ It had seemed like a wise choice at the time, but now Gendry needs her and she’s not here. 

“You are friends with the Princess, I’d heard.”  That brings his attention back to Gawen, or Hullen, or…he’d forgotten his name. 

“Aye,” Gendry says slowly.   

“You met during the war?” 

“Which one?” 

The man’s smile falters, and Gendry takes a sip of wine before saying, “Aye.  The War of the Five Kings.  We met on the road north.” 

He doesn’t know what else to say, and nor does his dinner partner.  They both drink again, and Gendry is grateful when Ser Edric bangs on the table for quiet, and the hall stills. 

King Bran cannot stand, and his voice is a mild one, so unlike Arya’s whose voice has always been able to cut like ice.  He welcomes the travellers north, and thanks them for being present, and bids them eat, and drink.  Gendry listens only partially, though he knows he should listen more.  His eyes have drifted over to Arya again, god help him, who is smiling at her brother, and he misses what it is that causes yells of pleasure and applause throughout the hall. 

“What was that?” he asks his neighbor. 

“There’s to be a tourney!” the neighbor says, delighted.  “To honor Queen Shireen.” 

A tourney.  That distracts him for a moment.  He likes tourneys.  Whenever he fights in them in the capital, he gets more cheers than Edric Storm.  The commons love him, bastard of Flea Bottom that he is.  If there’s a good melee, that would surely clear some of his head.  He turns his attention back to Bran Stark, who is bidding them all to enjoy the rest of the evening, and to be merry and, as if to demonstrate what merriment should look like, Arya is on her feet, her hand extended to Steffon Seaworth. She leads him through the steps of a dance that Gendry doesn’t know and has never seen before, and the tourney is out of his mind again. 

 _She’s always moved gracefully._ _Like a cat._ Her skirt swirls around her ankles, and he’s never really thought of her in skirts.  He remembers her in that acorn dress and that lacy one that the whores at the Peach had put her in, but this is different.  Her velvet is elegant and modest, and it swishes about her legs so prettily and how easily he’d shoved them up and aside as he’d pushed into her, moaning, panting and— 

“Will you dance with me, cousin?”  

Gendry looks up, and sees Shireen, and the memory shatters over him.  _As it should,_ he thinks.  This is his queen, the only woman in his life who should matter to him, the one to whom he’d sworn his life.  He takes a breath, willing his half-stiff member to remember where he is as he dabs at his lips with his napkin and stands.  “The pleasure would be mine, your grace.” 

“I don’t know this one, so I figure if I’m to make a fool of myself, best do it with someone who will do the same,” she says as they follow the line of dancers.  Gendry watches the footwork carefully, but he’s never been quick, never been good at dancing.  But he tries, and Shireen does too.   

“Look at Devan,” she says, rolling her eyes at the table.  “Says he’s too drunk to try.  The fool.” 

“He’s never liked dancing,” Gendry points out. 

“Yes, but neither do you and yet here you are.” 

“You caught me in a moment of weakness, I suppose,” Gendry responds.  He should bite his own tongue.  He shouldn’t say anything like that to Shireen—at least not in front of the court.  Besides, she’s quicker than most everyone else. 

“I suppose I did,” she says.  “Steffon,” she calls, and her goodbrother looks over his shoulder.  They’re in another line, now.  There are enough dancers for two groups.  “Have you got it?  Switch with Gendry so you can show me.” 

And just like that, he finds himself dancing with her.  Her cheeks are red again, and her hair is coming loose, and the only thing he can do is stare into her eyes. 

The laughter on her face changes ever so slightly.  Her eyes grow serious.  Where she’d been bubbling with life moments before, suddenly those silver eyes are soft and deep now and all Gendry wants to do is grab hold of her and kiss her and hold her to him, because nothing else matters—not the other dancers, or the music. 

 _Not my white cloak._  

It sends a chill through him.  “ _Plenty of white knights have had lovers before, if I understand correctly,”_ Aelgenth had said, but Gendry had just shaken his head.  His white cloak ended it for them—at least in that way. But he’d let it fall to the dirt in the godswood for her and, Lord of Light protect him, he’d do it again if she asked him, if she kept looking at him just the way she is now. 

 _I am weak_.   

The song ends, and Gendry turns away. 

He can’t bring himself to look at her.  Not now.  He makes his way back towards the table, but sees Ned Dayne and Sansa sitting there, speaking animatedly with King Bran, and all he can think is that _that_ is what Arya should have—some lord who’ll love her and give her children, not some soiled knight who’ll fuck her and his vows at once before the gods. 

He changes direction and makes his way out of the hall.   

It’s raining again, and off in the distance he sees a subtle flash of lightning.  _“Ours is the Fury,_ ” he remembers Ser Edric telling him, “ _Those were our father’s words too._ ” 

 _Your bloody father._ _I didn’t have one._  

Edric liked to believe his father cared for him.  Gendry knew better.  He’d met Mya, and Bella too… 

He feels a hand on the small of his back and almost jumps out of his skin.  Arya’s standing behind him, and leaning against him. 

“Shall we?” she whispers. 

“What?” he asks, confused. 

She frowns.  “I thought…I thought you wanted me to follow you?” 

He hadn’t thought of that, and opens his mouth, thinking quickly, trying to think of what on earth to say, but she speaks first.  “I don’t have to.  I can go back in if you want space.” 

 _No,_ is all he can think, followed closely by _My_ _vows._ But his lips form quite a different word. 

“Arya.” 

He tilts his head slightly, and looks down at her.  He licks his lips, and she smiles and her hand drops from the small of his back down to his ass, and a jolt goes right to his cock. 

It is that more than anything else that makes him step away. 

“Listen,” he begins, but he’s not sure what to say.  His mind is dull from wine and from want of her and she’s crossing her arms over her chest now.  “Listen, we should…” 

She sighs, and suddenly looks very tired.  She holds out her hand, and Gendry stares at it.  “Come on, then,” she says simply.  And he doesn’t know what it is that she’s proposing, and he knows that he should ask but he finds his hand in hers and she leads him across the lichyard, round the keep to another door into it that won’t take them through the main hall again.  Gendry hears the sound of muffled music, but more loudly, he hears the sound of their footsteps on the stone stairs that take them to the second floor.   

Arya leads him into a bedroom, and closes the door behind them.  She bars the door, then goes to the fireplace and lights a long wax candle in it, which she uses to light a row of candles on the mantle.  When she turns to look at him, there are no games in her eyes.  Her hands are on her hips. 

“What is it?” she asks. 

Where does he even begin?  He doesn’t even know what it is, just that it’s not…or it shouldn’t be…or it can’t be… “You regret it?” Her voice is not hard, but it’s not gentle, and her eyes are guarded.  _Her eyes should never be guarded around me._  

“No,” he says, and the words ring true, which he takes some small heart in, though god only knows he shouldn’t.  “Yes,” he adds.  “No and yes.  That’s the trouble, isn’t it?” 

Arya looks at him, and he can see the way the thoughts are bouncing through her mind.  _Reject me,_ he thinks, _I deserve it.  You deserve someone who can give himself to you completely._  

When she speaks, she does so slowly. “You swore to hold no keep, and father no sons.  Don’t try and tell me you’ve never loved a woman before.” 

He feels his ears turn red because they feel suddenly very warm.  “I have,” he says quietly. 

He wonders if she can see it in his face, the smiles that Aelgenth had put there, the way the two of them are still a pair in their own way, even if they don’t share a bed anymore.  _She was a girl when I left,_ he thinks to himself desperately.  And Aelgenth is his own age, and a blacksmith’s daughter besides.   

It seems as though Arya had been waiting for him to talk, but she has grown impatient.  “So?  There you are.  You’ve soiled your vows before.  And as far as broken vows go—” 

“I’ve not,” Gendry says.  She must understand that much, at least.  She must understand that Gendry’s never once put aside his vows.  He’d been tempted before, of course, on winter nights when it was him and Aelgenth by the night fires, or when he’d been a little drunk—or a lot drunk.  “I’ve never.  Not until now.  The woman I loved—she was before I took the white.” 

She takes his hand.  “So it’s guilt, then?” she says.  “That’s all it is?” 

“All it is?” Gendry snaps, but Arya’s used to him snapping.  She stands a little straighter, if anything, her neck elongating, her eyes seeming to grow lighter, rather than darker.  “It’s all I have, Arya.  All I am.  I am those vows, I am that honor, and a smile from you and I’m unmanned.” 

Arya smirks before wiping the expression from her face, as if knowing that smirking like that won’t help matters.  It doesn’t, of course.  Her smirk makes his stomach twist in knots, makes him want to kiss that smirk right off her face.  She’s staring at him so closely he feels like a boy again.  No one has looked at him this closely—no one except Aelgenth, but Aelgenth doesn’t have to search—not ever.  She knows his mind well.  Arya had too, once. 

“I know,” she whispers, and she squeezes his hand.  “I know, Gendry.  I understand.” 

“Do you?” 

“Yes,” she says simply, and she sighs.   

“Your honor wasn’t just completely destroyed because you couldn’t stop yourself from fucking some girl into the dirt.” 

Arya flares.  “Some girl, am I?” 

“To my vows you are.  It makes no difference if you’re Arya Stark or some—” but he cuts himself off, seeing the way her eyes are narrowing.  Because she’s not some girl.  If she were, it wouldn’t have happened.  He sags, leaning against her bedpost and drags his hands down his face for a moment.  “It’s like I forgot who I was,” he says, his voice hollow.  “It’s like I never knew who I was at all.” 

“You’re Gendry,” she says simply. 

 _Ser Gendry of Hollow Hill,_ he wants to say.  But that’s not how Arya knows him.  Just as for all she’s Arya Stark of Winterfell, she’s just Arya to him.  That’s always been the problem.  That she’s Arya to him— _his_ Arya, more than ever Shireen is _his_ queen.  It had been _his_ Arya he’d lost himself in earlier, and it’s _his_ Arya who’s staring at him now, her eyes still angry at being called “some girl.” 

“Aye,” he says.  “I’m Gendry.” 

“And you regret this,” Arya repeats. 

He looks up at her.  She is trying not to look nervous.  She is trying to look fierce, the way she did as a girl when she was too bold to let herself be frightened, even if terror was all around them.  Her neck is elongated, her arms are now crossed across her chest, and her face is guarded, and Gendry hates that.  _She should never be guarded from me._  

“No,” he says.  _And yes_. But he keeps that one silent.  He can’t bring himself to say it when Arya’s looking at him like that. 

She seems to sag with relief, and she takes a step towards him.  “You’re not the first knight of the kingsguard to take a lover,” she says.  “And you shan’t be the last.” 

 _Poor bastards.  They didn’t have Arya to sway them.  They were weaker than I in that._ Only Arya could have swayed him.  He shouldn’t be proud of that. 

“I know,” he says quietly.  “I…” he swallows and looks down at her.  Her eyes are shimmering now, and there’s such warmth there, such need.  _Does she want to again?_  

She seems to.  And he can’t seem to deny her, though he should.  He truly should. 

And his heart, curse the thing, swells. 

 _I’m lost.  I lost myself in you this afternoon and I’m lost now._  

“That’s not everything though, is it?” Arya asks.   

Gendry swallows.  Arya takes his chin in her hands and drags his face down to look her dead in the eye.  “The least you can do is tell me what’s going on in that bull’s head of yours,” she growls.  “Or else _I’ll_ start to regret it.” 

Gendry stares at her.  Fierce now.  Dancing silver, to soft wool, to steel.  _Less than a day and you’ve already turned poetical._  

He lowers his head and kisses her, and for a moment everything’s simple. 

Then she bites his lip. 

Gendry yelps. 

“That’s not what I want right now—nor what you want,” she says.  She doesn’t sound angry.  If anything, she sounds amused. 

“You _bit_ me!”  

“I know.  You’re trying to avoid this conversation, and I got enough of that this evening from Sansa, thank you very much.  Now out with it.” 

Gendry looks at her, then sighs and sits down on the trunk at the end of her bed.  “I’m frightened,” he says at last. 

“What of?” Arya asks.  “That Shireen will find out?  Or your brothers?” 

“Of…” he stops.  He’s frightened of having her, frightened of leaving her, frightened of wanting her, frightened of needing her, frightened of loving her.  That’s always been the trouble.  With Aelgenth, his vows had been enough to hold him back, but with Arya it’s as if they’re nothing.  That frightens him, yes—but it should frighten him more.  “I can’t give you what you deserve,” he says lamely.  “I’m not lord with a castle.  I can’t wed you.  I swore vows, and I can’t forsake them, even if I…even if I am breaking them now.  The only thing you’ll get from me is a soiled reputation, and someone to share your bed for a time.” 

“Good,” Arya says.  “I don’t want a husband, and my bed’s been lonely.  Besides—you’re one of my dearest friends.  I don’t see how any of this is a bad thing.” 

“My vows,” Gendry says, “I break them every moment I’m with you instead of my queen, and those vows mean everything to me.”  He wants to believe that—needs to.  How high had he risen—from nothing in Flea Bottom to the kingsguard, and those vows were the embodiment of that, of all he’d worked for all his life.  And yet somehow the words are hollow in his mouth? 

“You don’t want me, then?” her tone is too light and her voice is too thick, and Gendry wants to pull her into his arms and hold her. 

“I do,” he says.  “I do want you.  But I can’t have you.”  _Can’t have you, and shouldn’t want you._  

“Not forever,” Arya says.  “Just for now.” 

* * *

 

Arya wakes to find her bed empty, and she props herself up on her elbows as if hoping to see Gendry in a corner, but he’s not there. 

She sighs, and pulls herself out of bed, grinning at the sore feeling between her legs.  It’s been three years since Larence had left, and she’d not had anyone inside her since then and Gendry’s bigger than either Larence or Olyvar had been.  Every movement she makes reminds her that he’d been there.  It had made dancing with him the night before almost unbearable. 

She smiles as she pulls her trousers up her legs, and smiles as she finds a soft white shirt to put on under her vest, and smiles as she catches a glimpse of her mussed hair in the mirror.  _I look loved,_ she thinks, and finds a brush to comb it tame again.   

Gendry is standing guard by the door of the great hall as Shireen coos food into her son, and Arya glances at him as she passes.  His eyes lock onto hers for a moment, before the angle is too odd, and Arya is quite sure that Gendry wouldn’t want attention drawn to it.  She seats herself beside Sansa, who is helping Shireen slice up some of the apple cakes to feed little Robert. 

“Your son and Sansa’s will be great friends, won’t they?” Arya says, and Sansa looks at her sharply.  Arya bites back a twinge of annoyance.  _Why?_ She thinks at her sister.  _We’re past glares like that, aren’t we?_ She’d thought they were, but maybe the South had undone the progress they’d made before Sansa had left.  The thought doesn’t sit well in her stomach.  “Just as our father was friends with your uncle.” 

Shireen smiles at her.  “Starks and Baratheons must stick together.  I’d not thought of that.”  She winks at Sansa.  “It’s good of you to carry a child to be friends with my Robert.  Very considerate of you, Sansa.” 

“I think only of the good of the realm, naturally,” Sansa says, a sardonic smile playing at her lips. 

“For which I am grateful,” Shireen says.  “Gods be good, if Bar Emmon had his way on the council—” 

Sansa raises her cup of tea to her lips, and Shireen laughs.  Arya looks between them, confused, but neither Sansa nor Shireen elaborates.   

“Do you have plans for the day?” Arya asks.  “I imagine you won’t wish to ride after the trip north, but today is the market day in the winter town, if you’d like to visit.” 

Shireen smiles.  “Yes, that does sound lovely.” 

They finish their breakfast, and Shireen hands Robert to his nurse and she and Sansa and Arya proceed out of the hall, Gendry following at a respectful distance.  Arya can feel his eyes on her.  She hopes they are on her rear. 

“Arya?” Sansa says. 

“What?” 

“I said,” Shireen says gently, “I wish you’d warned us about the tourney.  Otherwise I’d have brought my best knights with me to show off the strength of the South.” 

Arya chuckles.  “But you’ve your kingsguard with you, your grace, surely that’s enough.” 

“It will have to do, I suppose,” Shireen says. 

“We’ve never hosted a tourney before at Winterfell,” Sansa says.  She sounds almost wistful.  “I never thought we could afford it.” 

“The champion’s purse is modest, but still an honor,” Arya tells them.  It seems wrong for Sansa to speak of the wealth of Winterfell before Shireen.   

“Who had the idea?” 

“Bran,” Arya says.  “He wondered what you would do to entertain such a fine host, and this was what he decided.”  Sansa flushes, and smiles, looking pleased.   

“And you arranged it?” Shireen asks. 

“Aye.  I did.” 

Shireen looks at her carefully, then smiles.  “You serve as his hand, then?” 

Arya can feel Sansa’s eyes on her, but it’s not a kind gaze.  _Why?_ She wants to yell at her sister.  _What have I done?  This is stupid._  

She remembers the Sansa who told her to put the memories aside, not to dwell on them, and almost out of spite, Arya heeds _that_ Sansa’s advice.  _That’s the Sansa I love,_ she thinks bitterly before she says, “We don’t use such terms here.  I am his princess, his sword arm, his justice.  I’ve been called many things, but none of them seem to fit.” 

“No, I can’t imagine it would.  There’s been no she-wolf like you before, has there?” 

Arya smiles wryly.  “No, not quite,” she says.   

They pass through the gates of the castle.  It is sunny today, and warmer than it’s been for a while.  Yet Shireen wears woolens, and Sansa does as well.  Arya is tempted to shuck off her vest, but she doesn’t.   

“There aren’t many knights in the north,” Shireen observes. 

“No,” Arya agrees.  “Very few.  But I think our warriors will make their king proud.  They’re fearsome.” 

“Is Larence coming?” Sansa asks, and Arya stiffens for just a moment, her mind not on her sister, but on Gendry who is undoubtedly listening to every word they say. 

“I don’t know,” Arya says easily.  “He was invited.” 

“Will he try and win your heart again?” Sansa asks.  She sounds eager and amused, and Arya wishes she’d stop.  _I don’t want to think about Larence.  I want to think about Gendry._  

“He’s to be wed,” she says shortly.  “To Lady Wylla.  Her father is quite insistent.” 

“Wylla Manderly?”  Sansa’s eyebrows go up.  “I’d not thought that would happen.  He was quite devoted to you.” 

“He is devoted to Bran’s crown.”  Arya’s proud of how she can keep the bitterness out of her voice.  She doesn’t want to talk about Larence in front of Gendry, she doesn’t, she truly does not.   

“Larence…” Shireen’s voice trails away, letting silence ask her question for her. 

“Larence Hornwood,” Sansa says easily.  “He was Lord Hornwood’s bastard, but Bran legitimized him that he could inherit his father’s lands.” 

“Ah,” Shireen says, then smiles.  “It is good that Lord Hornwood’s line could continue.  So many houses perished in the war.” 

That makes them all nod and Arya wonders who will be the next to speak. 

The market is thriving.  There are farmers selling their crops, and artisans selling furniture and woodworking, a smith who already has several strong looking young men standing about his forge, eager to buy new steel that they could compete in the tourney.  Sansa fawns over a wooler’s wares, holding up yarn that’s as thick as a finger or as thin as a hair.  Shireen goes quiet, watching everything pass around them. 

“It’s not so robust as the markets in White Harbor,” Arya says.  “We don’t get as much foreign trade here, since we’re so far inland.” 

“It’s lovely,” Shireen says, and when she turns to look at Arya, her eyes are kind.  They’re the same color as Gendry’s.  “And your people seem happy.” 

“They are,” Arya says modestly.  At least, she thought so.  She’d heard no rumors that spoke of anger with Bran’s reign, or frustration that it was Arya and not Rickon who so often rode from Winterfell to uphold the king’s law.   

“A short winter suits them, I think,” Shireen says.  “Winter makes any man bitter, and too well I remember the North in winter.”  She shudders.  “And to think it went on for years.  Hardly a few months now—that seems bearable.” 

Arya smiles wryly.  “It helps.  I dread the winters growing long again.” 

“You think they will?” 

Arya sighs.  How many times had she had this conversation with Bran?  “Bran is adamant that they won’t.  But I can’t be sure.  I want to believe him, but…” 

“Why don’t you?” 

“Does your Hand let you think every thing you think to be true is true?  Bran thinks he knows—and he may well.  Gods only know he knows more than I do, but that doesn’t mean that…prophets have been wrong before.  Visions can be misread.  And if a winter lasts too long, our people will starve.” 

“Then you’ll buy food.  The riverlands would surely sell,” but Arya shakes her head.  Shireen raises an eyebrow, but Arya doesn’t elaborate.  _I can’t tell her we’re coin poor.  Stone and wood aplenty, but not as much gold as we’d like._  

“Skins from the north are a luxury,” Shireen says, reading Arya’s silence a little too well.  “Surely in winter you could sell them—there’d be demand in the south.” 

“Luxury won’t feed farmers who’ve run through their stores,” Arya says.  “And the profits from fur trade aren’t enough to feed the entire kingdom.  It’s best that the winters remain short.” 

Sansa drifts back to them, carrying a basket of yarn.  “You’ll make something for the baby?” Arya asks her, and Sansa looks up, and there’s that guarded look again.  But it’s not unkind this time, at least.  Arya doesn’t understand it at all.  “Yes, I think so,” Sansa says.  “Baby things are quick to make since they’re so small.  A blanket, perhaps.  Or a hat.”  Sansa smiles prettily, and looks about.  “I think the fresh air does me good.  It is so wonderful to be home.  I feel revitalized.” 

“The journey was taxing?” Arya asks.   

“I was ill in the ship,” Sansa says, and for the first time since Sansa had arrived, there’s a hint of the warmth that Arya remembers from her sister.  “He doesn’t want to sit still, and I was feverish for a time.  And so tired,” she shakes her head.  “I had not thought to be so tired…” her voice trails away and she looks at Gendry.  Gendry is pretending not to listen.  “But I’ll not trouble you,” Sansa says.  “It’s hardly appropriate to share the changes a woman’s body undergoes when she’s with child.” 

Shireen laughs.  “We’ll make poor Gendry wish he’d gone deaf, won’t we.  Are you well, cousin?  You look ill at the very prospect.” 

“All well, your grace,” Gendry says simply.   

“Not too horrified?” 

He doesn’t reply to that one, and Sansa and Shireen laugh.  Arya looks at him for a moment before turning to Shireen.  “Come,” she says.  “There’s a flower seller this way whose roses are the finest I’ve ever seen.” 

* * *

“Who is Larence?” Gendry asks her.  They’re lying on her bed.  They’ve been kissing and he is hard and she’s pressed close to him, and he wishes he’d said just about anything else, even that spending the day with her and Shireen so close together had been agony, a constant reminder of what he was doing, and why he shouldn’t be doing it.  But he can’t help it. 

“ _Do not let a question go unasked,”_ Aelgenth had once told him.  _“_ _You always say what’s on your mind, but it’s never the question you should be asking. So don’t let the question go unasked.”_  

 _“What’s that supposed to mean?”_ That had made her smile.  He was always telling her when her comments made no sense.  Sometimes Aelgenth was lost in translation, especially in her earlier days in Westeros. 

 _“You_ _’re mocking me.”_  

 _“Only a little.”_ She’d kissed him. 

“Do we have to do this now?” Arya asks, and her lips are at his neck, and she’s nipping at his skin, one hand snaking down between them to cup his cock. 

Gendry pulls away.  Maybe it was the memory of Aelgenth that had given him the strength to do it.   

Arya sighs and twists onto her back.  “Larence Hornwood was a lover of mine,” she says calmly.  She looks at him out of the corner of her eye.  “And it ended a few years ago.  And badly.” 

Gendry nods.  He’s not a fool—she loves like someone who’s had a lover, perhaps even more than one.  But there’s still an odd sinking sensation in his stomach.  Not that he’s not the only one she’s ever loved, but that there’d been someone there when he hadn’t been. 

“He wanted to marry me,” Arya continues.  “He wanted to help me serve Bran, and to help make sure that the North knew true justice.” 

“That seems dutiful,” Gendry says warily.  He knows he’s stepping into a trap. 

“Perhaps,” she says icily.  “Or perhaps he didn’t truly love me, and only wanted power.  He’d not be the first to woo me to get closer to Bran.”  She rolls her eyes.  “Men can be remarkably predictable.  Because I’m a woman, I must want a husband.  Because I’m a princess, I must want a prince to aid me in my duties,” she makes a disgusted face.  “And Larence spoke sweetly, and I was fond of him because he reminded me of Jon.  And you.”  She doesn’t look at him.  “He was always so nervous about being legitimized.  If the North hated Bolton’s bastard, surely it was his bastardy and not his Bolton blood that did it.  Perhaps I’ve a soft spot in my heart for bitter bastards.”  She finally looks at him, smiling softly.  “There.  That’s Larence.” 

“So you broke it off?” 

“Yes.  Quite spectacularly.  There was a lot of yelling involved.”  She’s grinning, but her eyes are sad.  “I suppose I prefer it that way.  Lots of yelling.  Better than being left behind.” 

Gendry’s heart twists, and her eyes go wide.  “I didn’t mean you!” she says at once, reaching out a hand.  “Though…though it did hurt.  It hurt quite a lot.  But everything hurt then, because of Jon.  And I did miss you.”  He goes still.  Of course she had missed him.  She’d said as much already.  But why did it feel different when she said it now? 

“Another one then?”  he asks.  “Another lover?” 

Arya nods.  “Olyvar Frey.” 

“ _Frey_?” 

“He was Robb’s squire.  And he loved Robb.  Loved him dearly, and was loyal to him when his family went foul.  He was my—he was my first love.  The first person I was in love with,” Arya says.  She bites her lip, and looks up at him nervously, as though worried about what he might think of that.  “And he couldn’t bear it here.  As much as people didn’t hate Larence for his bastardy, they _did_ hate Olyvar for his blood.  He sailed away across the sea.”  Arya’s eyes are distant, and Gendry reaches out a hand to brush a strand of hair away from her face.  She hitches a smile onto her face. 

“So?  You said you’d had a love.  Who was she?” 

Suddenly, Gendry’s nervous.  If his stomach had sunk listening to Arya talk of her past loves, this was entirely different.  How could he even begin to explain Aelgenth?   

“She’s…she’s a friend of mine still,” Gendry says.  “We ended our affair when I took my vows, but she’s still my…” he’d already said friend.  Companion?  Partner?  “She’s a red priestess,” he says.  “From Lorath.  Like that Jaqen H’ghar.”  Arya’s face doesn’t move at all.  He should stop—he truly should.  This won’t end well, he knows it. 

“What’s she like?” Arya asks.  Her voice is light, but he can tell that she’s hiding a whole host of thoughts.   

“She’s…she’s a bit like you, actually,” Gendry says, and Arya looks startled.  “Not entirely.  She’s older, and she’s no princess.  She’s a blacksmith’s daughter, actually.”  He smiles fondly at the thought.  “But she’s forthright, and she cares about…” good?  He remembers Arya refusing to leave Hot Pie and Weasel and Lommy behind.  “About what’s right.” 

Arya doesn’t say anything.  She doesn’t say a word.   

“What is it?” Gendry asks nervously. 

“Do you still love her?” The question hangs in the air and her eyes are so sad, and Gendry can’t bear it.  _I shouldn’t have told her._ But Arya hated liars, and he would hate for her to hate him. 

“I…I care for her deeply.” 

“But do you love her?  Have I... am I…are you hers, if not in body, then in heart?”  She’s breathing hard, and her eyes are bright.  _You care about what’s right._  

Gendry pulls Arya close and, almost to his surprise, she lets him.  “I belong to my queen,” he says simply.  “You’ve stolen me away from her.  Not from Aelgenth.”  _If anything, Aelgenth stole me from you._  

Where had that thought come from? 

“Do you promise?” Arya says.  “I couldn’t bear it if I were…” she swallows. 

“I promise,” Gendry whispers, and he knows it’s true. 

She kisses him—kisses him hard, and Gendry’s hand rests on the curve of her waist as he twists back onto the bed so that she’s lying on top of him.  Her tongue slips between his lips and everything is right in the world, the taste of her right their, their tongues moving together, her hands rubbing against his chest, pushing up his white shirt.  

He finds the ties to her trousers and undoes them, slipping his hand down the front to find her core.  But the angle is bad, and he makes a frustrated noise against her lips. 

“What?” 

“These should come off,” he tells her, and she grins.  She rolls off him, and slides the trousers down her legs, and Gendry pulls his own off as well. 

It’s quick this time—quick, because when Arya climbs back on top of him, her hand guides his cock into her, quick because she slides up and down him, and he sees her biting her lip as she does so, quick because when he reaches up to cup her breasts, she rocks her hips against his, and when he does burst, it’s sooner than he expects and he’s only barely out of her when he comes.   

She smiles down at him, and drops her lips to his, and Gendry holds her close, holds on as if his life depends on it. 


	3. Chapter 3

When Gendry spars with his cousin Edric, and people stop to watch. They’re used to it by now—both of them big and strong. In the capital, people whisper how truly they look like their father, but in Winterfell there’s no such whispering.

“Get him!” he hears one of the onlookers shout, but Gendry doesn’t look to see which one it is. He’s got his sword in hand, and he knows that Edric’s faster than he looks. If Gendry can put his full weight into it, he has the upper hand, but Edric is smaller and Edric is quicker. _And Edric is younger._ When had Gendry’s knees started feeling so tired? He’s hardly an old man.

He catches Edric’s sword with his shield and pushes him back with it, and someone calls out, but Gendry can’t hear what it is they’re saying. His eyes are on Edric, and Edric dances away from his cut before swinging his sword again. Gendry catches it and Edric got too close. Gendry grins as he kicks his brother’s leg out from under him, toppling him to the ground.

“That was cheap,” Edric scowls at him as Gendry helps him up.

“It was a win,” Gendry shrugs. He turns to look at the gathered crowd.

He sees Steffon Seaworth, and Rickon Stark standing next to one another, both with blades in hand. “Come on, then,” he says. “You two are next.”

Steffon has a few years on Rickon, who still seems to be growing into his man’s body, but he’d not expected the youngest Stark to fight with such a ferocity. He has such an energy to him that he takes Steffy completely off guard and has him knocked to the ground before Steffy even knows what’s happened.

“Gods be good, where’d you learn to fight like that?” demands Steffon as Rickon helps him to his feet. Rickon shrugs and grins.

“The wolf blood, my sister calls it.”

“Does she fight like that?” Steffon demands, looking from Rickon to Gendry.

“Why are you asking them and not me?”

Gendry turns. Arya’s standing there, looking thoroughly amused.

“Forgive me, my lady,” Steffon says, bowing his head. “I didn’t see you there.”

“I know,” she says. “And no—I don’t fight like Rickon. I’m faster, and more contained.”

As if to prove her point, she darts forward and Steffy’s on the ground again. Rickon laughs.

“Don’t feel to bad,” he says. “She does that to me all the time.” He raises his hand and steps back from Arya, who’s got a wicked grin on her face.

“Come on, you,” she tells him, reaching up and ruffling his hair. “I’ve got something to talk to you about, brother.” And the two of them go off. Gendry watches them go, his eyes drifting down to Arya’s hips for just a moment.

“I’ve something to say to you as well, brother,” Edric says quietly and Gendry looks at him. _Is he going to reprimand me for kicking his own bloody feet out from under him?_ Edric can get so high and mighty when he feels he’s been wronged. He follows Edric back inside, up the steps to the third floor of the keep, and into Edric’s bedchamber.

Edric closes the door behind him.

“You won’t be the first knight of the kingsguard to have broken his vows with a woman, but gods be good, at least be subtle about it.”

Hot shame floods through him. He’d been naïve to think that no one would notice, as if no one noticing would somehow make it better.

“We _are_ being subtle,” he mumbles, sounding more boy than man.

“Are you? Staring at her arse like that, and dancing with her and her alone, and not even bothering to pretend you’re sleeping in the chambers that the Starks set aside for us? I don’t call that subtle.”

Gendry opens his mouth. Part of him wants to tell Edric to take his sword and shove it up his own arse. But another part of him can’t look away from Edric’s white silk cloak thrown over the back of a chair.

“I know she’s dear to you. She always has been. And the gods only know Shireen won’t bloody mind it. But don’t go…parading it like that. At least pretend to respect the vows you swore. That’s an order from your commander.”

It’s the command more than anything else that grates him. Edric Storm was raised as a proper little lordling, and is younger than Gendry besides. That’s the only reason he’s Lord Commander—it’s not because of his strength, or because he’s cleverer than Gendry, even if he can read and Gendry can’t.

“It’s not a problem with Aelgenth,” he says, but he wishes he could bring the words back into his mouth at once because of the sneer on Edric’s face.

“You aren’t fucking Aelgenth and the whole court knows it, just as the whole court knows you _are_ fucking Arya Stark.”

Gendry straightens angrily. He’s quite sure the whole court _doesn’t_ know he’s fucking Arya Stark.

But his defiance fades almost instantly. Edric is right—if he’s more concerned about that than breaking his vows in the first place… _I can’t forget them,_ he thinks. _Shireen deserves better than this. And so does Arya. I am those vows, and can’t be anything more._

And yet she’d called him “Gendry.”

Suddenly he’s tired. He wants to lie down, he wants to find Arya and hold her, he wants to drink a good dark beer and pretend he’s still a boy in Tobho Mott’s shop and that none of this has happened yet and he can dream of crafting his own armor.

“That it?” he asks.

“Go on,” Edric tells him, and Gendry turns on his heels and leaves.

* * *

“It’s the horse that’s going to be the problem,” Rickon says quietly. “Aly’s too recognizable, and I don’t think there’s a single mount in the stable that someone won’t notice is missing.”

Arya sighs. “I suppose I don’t care if I’m _recognizable_ or not,” she says frowning. She yawns. She is tired today, an oddity since she’s been sleeping very fitfully since Gendry came into her bed.

“You don’t want it to be a surprise?” Rickon asks.

“Well, I mean ideally,” Arya shrugs. “But it’s all for fun, really.”

“I still think someone will notice you’re missing. Sansa, or Bran, or—”

“I’m organizing the damn tourney. Not a single one of them will be able to find me at all because I’ll pretend to be running around like mad.”

Rickon chews his lip, and Arya grins. “But the rest is fine?”

“Yes,” he says. “I’ve got the armor together. And the lance. Are you sure you’ll be fine tilting?”

“I can sit a horse better than anyone you know,” Arya says, trying to sound neither insulted or arrogant, and not entirely sure she pulled off either convincingly.

Rickon grins. “I hope you win.”

“I do too,” she says. “Are you planning to enter?” she should have asked long before.

He shook his head. “I was going to enter the melee. I’m not going to win it—not if Ser Gendry’s and Ser Edric plan to, but I may put up a good show.”

Arya’s stomach twist. She tries not to imagine Rickon bloodied and long-faced and unconscious. He looks too much like Jon in her imagination. She presses a hand to his cheek but he shakes her off. “I’ll be fine. You don’t have to baby me.”

“I’ve heard of men who’ve had their skulls cracked in over a melee,” she says.

“Are you worried about Gendry?”

Arya blinks at him. “What’s Gendry got to do with anything?”

“Right,” Rickon says dryly.

Arya scowls. “Go…” she tries to think of something. “Go hit something, will you? May as well shape up if you’re going to face him in the melee.”

Rickon snorts and gets to his feet. “Fine. I’ll see if—if Ser Steffon will train with me.”

Arya watches him go, frowning. _What had he meant by that pause?_ She wonders.

She barely has a moment to think on it before Wylis approaches. “M’lady, the king would see you. He’s in the godswood.”

Arya stands and thanks him and hurries off to find Bran.

She finds him sitting beneath the weirwood in the exact spot that she and Gendry had first fucked. His back is leaning against the white wood of the tree, and he smiles at Arya as she approaches.

“All well?” he asks her.

“I’d have thought you’d be with queen Shireen,” she says, sitting next to him.

“I was all morning,” he replies. “But I’m less able to show her all she’d like than I would like. Meera is with her now.” He sounds almost bitter.

Arya places her hand in his and he squeezes it. “All well?” he asks again.

“Yes. Why wouldn’t it be?”

Bran looks up at the tree for a moment, then over at Arya. “Just wanted to be sure.”

She feels heat creeping up her neck. _He knows._

She’d known it was a possibility. But she’d hoped all the same…

“It won’t interfere with anything,” Arya says, forcing herself to be calm. “It’s just…” She doesn’t bother trying to find the word because Bran is nodding, but his eyes look as though he doesn’t quite believe her.

“That’s always how it starts for you,” he points out gently. “Just…and then…”

Arya glares at him. That was low, and Bran knows it.

“I worry about you is all,” he adds hastily.

“I’m a big girl, Bran,” she tells him. “I can handle myself.”

Bran squeezes her hand. “But you don’t have to do it on your own. I want you to be happy. And I want to help if I can.”

Arya looks at him. He’s so sweet, her brother. He’s always been the sweetest of them, kinder and more loving. _I’d do anything to protect you,_ she thinks fiercely. She remembers Larence, and Gerris Flint, and Landry Overton. _Gendry’s not like them, though. Gendry doesn’t want your ear. He just wants me._

“You needn’t worry about me,” she tells him.

“That’s precisely why I do,” Bran responds, rolling his eyes.

* * *

He awakens because the birds begin to chirp far too early. Far, far too early.

Bad enough that the sun hadn’t set until so late, now there are birds to wake him.

He huffs, and shifts and pulls the blankets closer around him and turns and—

Arya’s lying there next to him. She looks completely peaceful, and there’s even a faint smile to her lips, and—Gendry curses himself. He’s always been the type to pull blankets tightly around him. A habit he’d picked up when he’d been at the Inn at the Crossroads, and if you didn’t clutch your blankets to you, Willow Heddle would get them all. Arya’s only got a spit of linen over her, and one of her breasts is bared. In the half-darkness—it had never really gotten fully black, which he’d heard happened in the north in summer—he can see that it’s half-puckered with cold. Chagrinned, he throws a blanket over her, and does his best to let himself drift off to sleep.

But the birds keep chirping, and to his surprise, Arya shifts in her sleep, kicking the blanket he’d put over her down to the bottom of the bed—along with the linen, and suddenly she’s completely uncovered next to him and any hope he’d had of falling back asleep disappears because he can look at her.

She’s beautiful—the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. Her skin is pale and seems to glow faintly in the pre-dawn light, and her nipples are wide dark circles on breasts that are neither small nor large. Her stomach is muscled, and there are scars on it from some battle or another, and the thatch of darkness between her legs is thick and curly.

He wants to touch her. Wants to wake her. Wants to kiss her so deeply that the taste of her becomes a part of his tongue and it will never be gone from him. But she looks so peaceful lying there with that half smile, and it wasn’t as though he hadn’t had her the night before. _Or tonight, or tomorrow night._

He shouldn’t have her. He shouldn’t want her. He has his white cloak, and his queen, but what are they when Arya’s holding him, and calling his name as he pushes his way into the warm wet inside her. How easily he can forget everything when Arya wants him.

 _“The cloak is a challenge greater than any you’ll ever face,”_ he remembers Lord Davos telling him, “ _Far more than this.”_ He’d patted the Hand’s chain. _“This I can put down and go back to my Marya whenever I like. That…that will be your shroud in your grave, no matter what it is that you’d rather be doing.”_

What a curse, the vows he’d sworn. And how he’d thought them a blessing when first Shireen had offered him his white cloak.

Next to him, Arya makes a huff in her sleep and she shifts. As if to tantalize him, her legs have spread, and the angle of her torso pushes her breasts higher in the air. He hears a particularly persistent bird chirping incessantly, unendingly, and he bows his head and sucks one of her nipples into his mouth. She tastes of sweat and of roses and he doesn’t think anything could taste sweeter. His hand comes to rest on her stomach, and part of him wants her to wake and shout at him, tell him that she’d been asleep, that this was not to be born, that he was a knight, that he assumed too much.

But she sighs in her sleep, and shifts again, and Gendry’s hand floats down to the thatch of black between her legs, running his hand over it as if he were petting a cat. He lets his fingers slide down to her slit, and finds that it is neither dry nor wet. Arya sighs again and her hips shift and her legs fall open even wider.

What a temptation. _What a horrible bastard I am._

He kisses his way down her stomach, nuzzles his nose into the hair of her mound which smells of sweat and sex, then shifts his own weight, moving so that his face is between her legs. He presses his lips to her slit, then extends his tongue and even as he does so, he feels her juices start to flow onto his tongue, an invitation. He nudges her nub with his nose as he suckles at her cunt, and when he looks up, she’s awake—her dark eyes hooded as she looks down at him.

He pauses, pulling his face away, not sure what to say, whether he should apologize, whether he should ask, but Arya simply says, “Don’t stop,” and who is he to deny her anything she wants? How can he, when she tastes as good as spring on his tongue?

He takes her hips in his hands and tilts them upwards, then takes her legs and spreads them as wide as they will go. She’s open to him—not so much a slit as a flower whose fragrance is enough to make him forget that he is Ser Gendry of Hollow Hill, a knight in Queen Shireen’s kingsguard. He is a boy, he is a man, and the taste of Arya is all he can want, and she—gasping beneath his tongue, is so good as to give him more. With every lick, it is as though he draws that nectar out of her, and the more he tastes of her, the more he swells, the needier his own cock feels, the heavier his balls.   He licks, and licks, and as her breath becomes faster, his own desire to reach down underneath him and take his shaft in hand grows stronger. But not yet. Not yet, not while she is enjoying this too much. He caresses her thighs, he cups her ass, he lets his fingers trail over her smaller, puckered hole and she bites back a moan, and Gendry, flattens his tongue against her nub and slides a thumb into the heart of that flower and feels as it flexes around him in time with the pumping of her heart, in time with the gasping of her breath.

She pulls away from him and lies there for just a moment, and Gendry rests his chin against her thigh, watching her begin to gather herself back together. She sits up, looking almost embarrassed. It’s lighter out now than it had been when he’d started, and he can see that her skin is flushed and red.

“I thought I was dreaming,” she whispers to him. “And then I wasn’t.” Her lips are chapped, and she licks them, and the sight of her tongue sends a jolt through Gendry’s cock. He doesn’t let it show on his face, but he can’t stop the image of Arya licking her way over his cock from filling his mind, and making him ache so very much.

“Arya,” he whispers, and she’s smiling.

“That’s quite the way to wake up,” she teases, and leans forward, and kisses the top of his head, pressing his face to her breasts.

“It was all right?”

She snorts. “Yeah. Yeah, it was _all right.”_

He grins, and twists his head and nips at the side of her breast. “Good,” he says, and he kisses his way to a nipple. “I’m glad of that.”

“Properly diligent,” she says and she places two fingers under his chin and draws his lips up to hers. She sits back, holding his head between her hands, and pulls him up the bed with her, and he hovers over her, knowing she can feel the stiffness of his manhood. His eyes roll into the back of his head as the tip of it rubs along her stomach, and he feels his seed begin to drip between them.

She doesn’t stop kissing him, lazily, deeply—her arms entwine around his neck and pull him closer to her, and then he feels her twist underneath him, and he’s on his back, and she’s hovering over him, her nipples rubbing lightly against his chest, her sweet wet cunt sliding along his shaft.

“How would you like me?” she purrs as she kisses her way down his neck and across his chest, and then back up the other side.

Gendry can’t think. Every way—any way, however she likes. But the only thing he manages to say is, “Arya.”

She chuckles, and kisses him, her tongue sliding between his lips and dancing with his own for just a moment before she breaks away and sits up straight, and rocks her hips along his shaft as he moans. She rests her hands against his chest, her thumbs rubbing over his nipples, her fingers brushing through his chest hair, and he opens his mouth to beg her, but she’s moving already. Her hands cup his balls gently, and she licks her way along his shaft, just as he’d imagined earlier. What he hadn’t imagined, hadn’t dreamed of imagining was the wicked grin on her face as she says, “I taste good on you,” and plunges her lips over the head of his cock, as that bird chirps again and Gendry groans and comes harder than he has a right to at this hour of the morning. She pumps her head over his cock, drinks him down, her tongue licking tenderly at his tip, but for all her gentleness, it’s still too much. But he can’t pull himself away—he can’t. Not when everything is as perfect as it is.

She lets him loose with a soft pop from her lips, and cups his balls again gently before climbing her way up the bed. He wraps his arms around her, and she nestles her head in the crook of his neck, and the sound of birds fades away as Gendry drifts off to sleep.

* * *

Gendry is in the yard when the riders come through the gates of Winterfell. He sees blue banners, and orange, and steps out of the way of a line of horses. Riders descend gracefully, and he sees a tall man with light brown hair help a plump young woman with green hair down from her horse. _Wylla Manderly_. He remembers her from years before, when she’d been hardly older than Arya. She looks about, and straightens her skirts before taking the man’s arm.

Queen Meera comes out of the keep, a smile on her face. She’s not in skirts today, and her hair is in a simple braid. “We’d not thought to have you until tomorrow!” she says happily. She kisses Wylla’s cheek, and extends a hand to the man to kiss.

“My grandfather’s caravan was moving too slowly,” Wylla complains. “So we rode ahead. I do hope we aren’t imposing arriving sooner than we’d thought.”

“We’d be poor liege lords if we couldn’t host you,” Meera laughs.

“That’s what father said when we told him we were riding ahead,” Wylla says. She looks around and it’s only then that her eyes fall on Gendry.

“That’s never Ser Gendry, is it?” she beams and hurries towards him excitedly. “Well if there’s a face I’d never thought to see again.”

“My lady,” Gendry says, bowing, and pressing her proffered hand to his lips. “I trust you are well.”

“As well as can be. I’m to be wed soon.”

“Is that so?” he asks. He glances at the man with the light brown hair, who is eyeing him.

“Oh yes. Larence. You’ve not met Ser Gendry, have you?”

Gendry swallows. So this is Larence. His eyes are small, and his face is drawn. He seems like he’s not even got the capacity to laugh. _What would Arya see in him?_

_What does she see in me?_

“Ser,” said Larence Hornwood approaching.

“My Lord,” Gendry says, sweeping a bow again.

“Larence, this is Ser Gendry of Hollow Hill. He’s a dear friend of House Stark. And, I…” she glances at Edric, who is standing next to them. “Ser Edric Storm, I take it?”

“My lady,” Edric says, and he takes Wylla’s hand as well. “An honor to meet you.”

“Ser Edric, my intended, Lord Larence Hornwood of Hornwood. There, I think we’ve all met.” Wylla smiles. “Will you both be riding in the tourney? Larence intends to win it.”

“I’m not enough of a horseman, I fear,” Gendry says. “It’s the melee for me.”

“I’ll be riding,” Edric says. “To honor my queen.”

“How marvelous. It’s so exciting. I can’t even think of the last time there’s been a tourney in the North. Grandfather used to make noises about hosting one in White Harbor, but I don’t think we’d have ever gotten the turnout needed for it. But Winterfell being rebuilt, and the southron queen come north…” she sighs delightedly.

“Forgive me,” Larence says sharply. “I’ve business to attend to.” And he disappears.

Gendry feels Edric stiffen next to him. Wylla watches Larence go, a slight frown on her face.

“He’s just a pisspoor loser,” she mutters.

Gendry snorts, and Edric hurries to hide his astonishment that Wylla would speak that way.

“Glad to see you’ve not changed,” he says. “I’d feared for a moment you’d taken up an almost courtly way of speaking your mind without speaking your mind.”

Wylla laughs. “For Larence’s benefit. I’ll wean him of it, fear not. I think he doesn’t like it when I speak too plainly because it reminds him…well…” she gives Gendry a significant look. “He’s a pisspoor loser and I’m his second choice.” She shrugs.

“You deserve a man for whom you’re the first choice,” Gendry says.

“It’s sweet of you to say, but you’ll find that eligible men are few and far between in the North and I’d just as soon have a castle of my own. He’s not so bad, though I imagine he’ll be unbearably moody while we’re here.”

Gendry almost felt bad for Wylla that he was glad to hear that. _Anyone who hurts Arya deserves to feel moody_ , he thinks.

Wylla sighs, and stretches. “I should go find him, I suppose. I’m sure he’s pouting.” She rolls her eyes and gives Gendry a little smile, then hurries off.

Edric glances at Gendry. “You met her during the war?” he asks.

Gendry nods. “She’s Lord Manderly’s granddaughter. And quite a force to be reckoned with.”

Edric’s gaze is distant for a moment, then he brings himself back. “And you’re sure you won’t ride in the lists? I fear there aren’t enough of us to truly represent the queen.”

“Someone’s got to win the melee,” Gendry points out.

“Our father always did.” That’s what convinces Edric, though Gendry wishes he’d kept Robert Baratheon out of it.

“I won’t be using a war hammer,” Gendry says. “I’ve got my own sword and I plan to use it.”

“Of course,” Edric replies quickly. “I didn’t mean to imply that you had to use a war hammer.”

“Good.”

Gendry turns and marches away, not entirely sure where he’s going. He’s past the entrance to the keep when he decides that he’s going to climb up to the parapets and look out over the moors.

When he’d last been in Winterfell, this wall had been destroyed. Now he stands on well supported wood planking as he strolls around the wide curtain walls, looking out. He can see the winter town and the tourney grounds that are being erected. He imagines that’s where Arya is now, overseeing the event as she is. He stares at it for a moment, wondering if his eyes are good enough that he could actually see her.

But that’s stupid. He’s stupid, just like she’s always telling him.

Still, he smiles as he turns away and continues his walk.

He’s rounding a tower when he hears a voice and pauses.

“How can I not?”

It’s Sansa Stark and Ned Dayne. Gendry peeks around the tower to see them standing there, leaning on one another, looking out over the moors.

“You mustn’t worry. It’s different this time,” Ned whispers to her, his hand running gently along her arm.

“And yet somehow that only makes me more nervous.”

“Sansa—”

“Please, Ned. Please don’t.”

Ned stops whatever it was he was going to say, and he squeezes Sansa closer to him, kissing the side of her head. Now seems as good a pause as any to interrupt during. Gendry keeps walking.

They both look around at the sound of his footsteps, and he pretends he didn’t hear anything.

“My lady. My lord.”

Sansa’s eyes flit over him for half a moment before she turns away. Ned Dayne, however, asks, “What brings you up on the walls?”

“They’re fully here this time. Thought I’d see how far around they go.”

Ned gives him a smile, and looks back at Sansa. Sansa turns to face Gendry again. Her face is quite different now. Warmer, more gracious.

“Is Winterfell as you remember it, my lady?” he asks her.

Sansa shakes her head. “No,” she says. “Some of it’s the same, but much of it’s changed. Though I cannot tell if that is my own memory, or if that’s Bran’s rebuild.”

“A bit of both, I’d imagine,” Gendry says. “Well, I’ll not intrude any longer.”

Neither of them complain as he continues on his walk and he moves away from them as quickly as is seemly.

He’d never been overly fond of Ned Dayne. He wasn’t so bad as some, but Gendry had trouble with a bad first impression. Aelgenth often told him that was a weakness he should shed. But for Ned Dayne…

Maybe it’s that he’d chosen Sansa over Arya. Gendry couldn’t understand anyone who did that.

Then he shakes his head. Ned Dayne hadn’t truly chosen Sansa over Arya. Arya hadn’t wanted him. _She wants me, though._ And he smiles.

He thinks of Edric’s command, though it should be his vows he thinks of, not his lord commander, and shakes himself. _God, I need to stop thinking this way. It’ll only hurt me in the end._

* * *

Larence ignores her thoroughly, and Arya can’t help but be glad of that. The first hour of dinner would have been difficult enough, what with Sansa ignoring her. She almost grabs Ned after the meal to ask if she’d done something, but that’s a stupid thought. _I shouldn’t have to,_ she thinks bitterly.

At least Larence focuses on Wylla, who is delighting Shireen and Steffon Seaworth with stories of White Harbor and Ser Davos’ first stay there. “I didn’t know, you see,” she says gleefully. “I didn’t know that my grandfather had a plan. I was just a stupid little girl. Impassioned, loyal, stupid. Not that I regret any of it, since it did bring our Rickon back from the Skaggs.”

She winks down the table at Rickon. “I will say, I’d fancied marrying the Young Wolf and was very disappointed when he wed,” she sighs. “And of course Rickon’s too young for me.”

That makes Larence glower. Wylla ignores it. “When do you take your seat?” she asks Rickon.

“I plan to ride north when the queen leaves,” he says, inclining his head to Shireen.

“I had heard you were thinking of renaming it. _Please_ do.”

Rickon laughs. “The Starkfort, I was thinking. Add a little insult to that injury.” He grins, and his teeth are sharp and Arya nods, approvingly.

“Every time I hear it, I’m a little more pleased. I’m _sure_ Robb would be proud,” she tells him.

“It is a good name,” Sansa agrees.

“And no less foreboding than the Dreadfort. I commend the choice,” Steffy says, raising his glass of wine. Rickon flushes. “Although, you could style yourself quite well as lord of the Dreadfort. Rickon Dreadstark does have a ring to it.”

“I wish you’d tear it stone from stone and rebuild it from the ground up. Surely now that Winterfell is complete, the north’s stonemasons require other work,” Wylla says, ripping up a piece of bread and buttering it.

“We’ll see,” Rickon says. “I don’t want to spend all my wealth before I know my land. That hardly seems befitting of a good lord.”

Arya’s heart swells with pride.

“Father would be proud,” Sansa says, and Arya looks at her. Sansa shares her glance for just a moment, and smiles. _She blows hot and then cold. I could scream._

Instead, she looks for Gendry. He’s seated halfway across the hall now with some of Wylla’s riders, drinking and talking intently. She feels herself relax watching him talk. He, at least, is at ease. And soon enough this dinner will be over, and he’ll hold her in his arms and Sansa’s inconsistency and Larence’s mere presence will wash away in the smell and touch of him. _I am the night wolf—I can survive dinner._

At least, that was what she’d thought. When the table runs through its wine, Arya stands, swaying to fetch another bottle.

“Surely a servant can get it for you,” Sansa calls after her, but Arya shrugs and steps down from the dais and makes her way towards the cellar. She plucks a bottle from a rack and turns around and—

“Gods be good, don’t _do_ that,” she tells Larence. He’s standing over her, arms crossed over his chest.

“I thought we should talk.”

“What about?” she asks. “We don’t mean anything to one another anymore, Larence. What’s there to talk about?”

He rolls his eye. “I don’t like the way I’ve been received here.”

“And how’s that?” she asks. She’s been at the tourney grounds all day, and then with Rickon helping him prepare for the melee.

“Like I am unwelcome. I am a bannerman of House Stark and a friend of Winterfell, and yet I feel unwelcome in these halls.”

“Did Bran say something?” Arya asks, arching her eyebrow, knowing the answer.

“No. It’s not in words it’s in…demeanor.”

“Well, if you pull the stick out from your arse, maybe you’ll care less about how others react to the fact you’ve a stick up your arse.” That’s when Arya knows she’s a good bit drunker than she’d thought.

Larence gapes at her. His cheeks flush red and he takes a step towards her. But if he thinks to intimidate her, he really should know better. “You’re just as horrible as I remember, then?” his voice is scathing.

“Probably worse,” Arya says. “Now if you’ll excuse me,” she says, sidestepping him. His hand shoots out to grab her arm, and Arya considers dislocating his shoulder, but that wouldn’t be a good start to the tourney’s festivities.

“I know what you are,” he whispers fiercely. “Don’t for a second think I don’t. Don’t for a second think that anyone knows you better than me.”

Arya starts to laugh. She doesn’t mean to—not really. Maybe once the words would have chilled her to the bone. She’d told Larence so much, after all. So very much, more than she’d told Bran, or Sansa, or Olyvar. He’d caught her when she was older, when she understood it all better. But now…

“You keep thinking that,” she says. His grip has loosened in surprise at her laughter, and she pulls her arm loose. “Keep thinking that if it makes you feel better. Just remember, we bring out the worst in each other, so I’ll not be seeking you out.”

She passes him and climbs back up from the wine cellar, hoping that Larence at least has the good sense to wait a few minutes before following her.

When she reaches the main level, though, his words catch up to her. _You’re just as horrible as I remember, then?_

 _I’m not horrible,_ she reminds herself. _I’m not…_

But the damage is done for the night, and Arya sags. She hands the bottle of wine she’d gone to fetch to a steward and turns away from the hall. _Bloody Larence._ He and Sansa were the only ones who could make her feel like a horrid little girl all over again. Larence _more_ than Sansa, because Larence _knows about…_

She takes the stairs up to her bedroom two at a time. _Gendry knows too. Gendry doesn’t hate me,_ she reminds herself, taking a deep breath. _And Jon knew. And he understood. Larence is just bitter that I wouldn’t wed him._

And yet his words had stuck her like a knife, and she was bleeding in the canals of Braavos all over again. She throws herself onto the bed. It smells like Gendry, and she tries to remember the way that she’d woken up that morning with his lips between her legs. _It was supposed to be a good day._

She presses her face into Gendry’s pillow and inhales the smell of his sweat. She focuses on him, on the warmth of his skin, on the color of his eyes, on the sound of his voice. Gendry, not Larence, not _mother._

_At least Olyvar never knew._

He’d have been unable to bear it. His heart was soft, and good, and bad enough that his house had betrayed her in the first place.

_“You won’t.”_

_“I will.”_

_“I’m your mother.”_

_“No. Not mother. Mother merciless.”_

_Mercy, mercy, mercy._

She hears the door open, hears the sound of Gendry’s footsteps and the bed shifting next to her. His hand is on her back.

“Larence?” he asks.

“How could you tell?”

“He followed you out, then came back and seemed surprised you weren’t there.”

“Were you watching me?”

“Of course.” He’s silent for a moment, then, “Anything I can do?”

“Just hold me. And don’t think I’m horrible.”

“I could never think you were horrible,” Gendry says and he lies down next to her and pulls her to his chest. “Never, ever, ever.”

* * *

The first day of the tourney dawned bright and Arya woke before Gendry. As tempted as she is to kiss him awake, or even suck him awake as he’d licked her only a few days before, she can’t. Not today.

Today she shrugs into simple clothing and hurries down the hallway to Rickon’s bedroom, knocking on his door. He opens it almost immediately, looking groggy.

“Ready?” she asks him. And together, they hurry down the stairs and out the back door and off to the stables. She passes Black Aly’s stall, and goes to the simple chestnut courser that Rickon had found for her, then she and Rickon leave the castle and make their way—not to the tourney grounds, but to the godswood. Arya shrugs into her plate armor there, and puts on her helm, and Rickon presents her with a shield. It is dark grey, and has the legend of a black wolf on it.

“You know what to do?” she asks Rickon from under his helmet.

Rickon pretends to look offended, then says, mockery dripping from his voice. “Who’s that? A northerner’s not a knight! That’s the night wolf!”

“Try to sound more believable than that,” Arya says to him, and he grins.

“I’ll try. Can’t guarantee I’ll succeed.”

Arya takes the long route to the tourney grounds, but when she kicks the chestnut horse into the view of the lists, she hears a cheer of excitement. “ _The commons do love a Mystery Knight,”_ she remembers Sansa saying once. And she’s always loved giving the people what they want.

She pulls her horse up next to Ned Dayne’s horse, and he casts her a sideways glance. He looks between her shield and the stand where Bran is sitting with Sansa and Meera and Shireen’s court, but he doesn’t say a word.

Arya sees Gendry standing behind Shireen. His arms are crossed over his chest and he’s got a sardonic look on his face that tells her he knows exactly who’s under all the armor. _Well, it’s not like it was supposed to be a huge secret._

The tree is decided upon and Arya will be tilting opposite Ser Ryam Beesbury. He’s a big fellow, but Arya pops him from his saddle with ease on the first run to the delight of the spectators. She raises her lance in salute to Bran, who shares Gendry’s sardonic smile, and then rides back to the end of the lists to wait for the next round.

“Are you going to watch?” Rickon asks her from the tent. He sounds excited.

“I wasn’t planning to,” Arya says. “Do you have any water?”

“I’ll get a skin now,” Rickon says. “Steffon’s riding. May I watch him?”

“I don’t need you to watch after me like a septa,” Arya says. Her mind is suddenly full of Septa Mordane. _What would she make of me? She’d probably put her head in her hands and tell me I’m a lost cause._ Well, if that meant she got to ride in tourneys and serve Winterfell and the North, and bed Gendry twice a day if she liked, she couldn’t be disappointed in letting the good septa down.

Rickon comes back a moment later and hands her a skin of water.

“Thank you squire,” she teases and he sticks his tongue out at her before going back out of the tent to watch Steffy ride. _It will warm Lord Davos’ heart to know that they are friends,_ she thinks.

It comes and goes in a flash, a moment of dizziness that has Arya reaching for the tent pole. Her eyes are seeing all sorts of colorful dots and she guides herself onto a stool and opens the skin of water to pour some down her throat. Before she’s done drinking, she feels well again. _I should have had breakfast,_ she thinks, and puts the dizziness from her mind.

“Did he win?” she asks Rickon as he comes back in, and Rickon shakes his head.

“He was riding against Larence,” he says and that’s all Arya needs to know. She sighs.

“Why couldn’t he have gotten Edric Storm instead? Someone who could land him soundly on his arse?”

“Because then you wouldn’t get to face him.”

Arya wasn’t sure she wanted to. She’d rather pretend that he wasn’t there. That more than anything else had helped after that first night. Well, that and remembering Gendry. He was so very good at distracting her in quite the right ways…

 _How on earth am I going to watch him tomorrow?_ She wonders. _I’ll be in full armor…_

She wanted to see him fight in the melee. She’d not seen Gendry fight in years, beyond sparring in the yard, but sparring in the yard against Edric Storm was not the same as fighting in a melee. She drank from the water skin again, thinking.

The sun was high overhead by the time it was her turn to ride again, and she donned her helmet and mounted her horse and rode out. Next she would be facing a young knight named Ryam Connington, and perhaps she should not be smirking as she couched her lance under her arm, for he had progressed to the second tier, but after two passes he was in the dirt again, and the crowd was thrilled.

Rickon was grinning when she entered her tent again, and Arya smiled at him. “You’re going to win it! I know it,” he said, clapping her on the shoulder. Her armor clanged.

“Don’t say that. The thing’s not won yet. I still have another tilt today.” _And then all of tomorrow._ She felt suddenly tired, even though she’d hardly exerted herself more than usual. She drank from her waterskin, and sat down on a bench and waited. Rickon ducked back out of the tent, and came back with the news of who she’d be facing next.

“You’re tilting against Ned,” he told her.

“That’s lucky,” Arya says. Her stomach growls. There should be time enough to eat, she thinks, and gives Rickon a look.

“I’ll see if I can get you something,” he tells her. “Don’t want you weak for your next bout.”

“You’re thoughtful,” she calls after him.

He comes back with a meat pie, which Arya wolfs down, and when she stands, she feels…she feels better. Yes, she’s sure she does. It was hunger. She finishes her water skin, and squares her shoulder, and puts on her helmet, striding out to her horse again. She mounts, and Rickon hands her her lance and armor, and she nudges the horse to a walk.

At the other end of the list, she sees Ned. His armor is pale as a star, and his purple cloak sits easily on his shoulders. She sees a blue ribbon tied to his lance and resists rolling her eyes. _Ned would ask Sansa for a favor to wear, even though they’re already married._ She wonders if she’d asked Gendry, if he’d have given her something. Not to tie around her lance, but to tuck into her boot or something. It’s a stupid thought, and she shouldn’t have it.

The flag waves, and she kicks her horse forward, eyes on Ned and his fluttering blue ribbon, bringing her own lance down. She stares hard at him, at his shield with it’s falling silver star and the sigil of House Dayne only has one star, not two.

She hears the crack before she feels the full force of Ned’s lance against her arm, and when she falls from her saddle it’s as if she’s in a dream, as if she’s falling slowly. _Quick as a cat,_ she thinks, and she tries to flip, to prepare to roll, to something, to anything that she’d had to learn however many years before—and it half works, because she doesn’t land on her back, and doesn’t land on her stomach.

She does land on her shoulder, though, and her ribs strike the metal of her shield Arya rolls over twice before the speed of the world seems to go at a normal pace again.

 _Fool,_ she thinks at herself. _You should have had breakfast. That pie wasn’t enough._

She presses her hands into the ground, preparing to push herself to her feet to wave at the crowd and go off, but it’s like there’s a knife jamming into her shoulder and twisting.


	4. Chapter 4

“She’s all right?” Gendry asks as he passes Rickon Stark. Rickon’s got an empty water skin in his hand, and he doesn’t look scared, so Gendry takes that as a good sign.

“Dislocated shoulder,” Rickon says. “And the maester says she’s bruised some ribs as well. But all in all, she landed well.”

“That’s something. Wish she’d beaten him.”

“So does she,” Rickon sighs. Then he waves the water skin at Gendry by way of explanation for why he isn’t staying to chat and goes off, and Gendry pushes aside the flap of the tent and sees Arya sitting there in a thin white shirt and dark pants. She’s holding a block of ice wrapped in a strip of linen to her shoulder and her armor is lying on the ground and Gendry rolls his eyes at the sight of it.

“He should have at least put it away properly,” he mutters.

“He had other things on his mind,” Arya says. Gendry leaves it where it is. Rickon Stark can collect it later. It’s not Gendry’s job. He sits down next to her and brushes her hair behind her ear and kisses her cheek.

“I’m never going to let you live down being knocked from your horse by Ned Dayne,” he points out.

“I’d be disappointed if you did. I deserve it,” she grumbles.

“What happened?” Gendry asks.

“I didn’t have breakfast and got dizzy,” Arya says.

“Dizzy?”

“Yeah.”

“And yet you rolled like that.”

Arya shrugged, then winced. “Ow,” she moaned.

“Here,” Gendry said, and he took the ice from her hand. It was bloody freezing, but at least she wouldn’t have to hold it.

“You’d better win the melee tomorrow. It’s not fair if we’re both weaker than we say we are,” she tells him.

“Just for you,” he promises.

“Do you need a ribbon to tie on your arm or something?”

“What?”

“Ned had a ribbon from Sansa. I could give you one.”

Gendry thinks. He shouldn’t. He’s a kingsguard. He’s seen his brothers wear a lady’s favor in a tourney before, because a favor was only about gallantry and didn’t need to mean anything, but with Arya, undoubtedly it would. _I promised Edric we’d be subtle._

“Do you even own any ribbons?”

“Of course I do, stupid. I’m a lady.   I…just don’t use them very often is all.”

There’s a war in Gendry’s heart. Arya has a ribbon to wear as a favor that she would give him, but he can’t wear it. It would dishonor Shireen. Because it would dishonor Shireen, wouldn’t it?

“I…I think it might come off in the melee. They’re not like jousts,” he says. She would know that, of course.

She sighs, and nods, and shifts slightly.

“Do you want me to take you back to the castle? Do you want to lie down?” he asks.

“Don’t fuss. I want to watch the rest of the tourney,” she says, and Gendry nods. “I need a tunic, though. I would go out like this if it weren’t for the whole honor of the North resting on this tourney’s outcome,” she sighs.

For a wild moment, Gendry imagines sweeping his white silk cloak from his shoulders and wrapping it around her. He imagines her dressed in white, and looking up at him, smiling, holding his cloak to her. Too late for his own heart, he remembers that this is the cloak they’d fucked on, the one that they’d soiled when he’d first broken his vows, and that he’d had to give to a washerwoman to clean as best she could.

He bends down and presses his lips to hers, and Arya nips at his lip lightly before pulling her lips away and resting her forehead against his.

It’s as if she’d heard Rickon coming, but there he is with the water skin again. “I have a jerkin for you as well, if you want help getting into it,” he says, holding it up. It’s dark grey, and Arya flinches as she slides her shoulder into it. Rickon helps her lace it up.

“Make sure my armor is taken care of,” she tells him, before looking at Gendry.

He gets to his feet, and together, they go back to the royal dais.

* * *

Arya can’t sleep that night. Her shoulder hurts, her ribs hurt, her pride hurts. She’d done her best to ignore Larence’s smug smile at dinner, and had even done a decent job of it, but avoiding the way that Sansa had smiled at Ned had been harder. It wasn’t that Sansa didn’t deserve to bee proud of her husband, or that Ned hadn’t ridden well, it was that Arya could ride far better than he could, and yet she was sitting there, trying to avoid moving her shoulder because it hurt too badly. At least Rickon and Steffon didn’t frown at her consolingly as they cut her meat for her. They seemed to see well enough that she did not want their comfort.

The hall was loud, and wine was flowing, and the last time Arya had been in a hall this raucous had been when Bran had been wed. There hadn’t been a tourney then, but his bannermen had all been invited, and they’d all brought hosts of their own, and the room had been full to bursting. Olyvar had been there, and Arya had done her best to keep the murmured comments about his twin towers out of his earshot.

He had heard them anyway, of course. _It wasn’t why he left,_ Arya reminds herself for the hundredth time. _At least, not solely._ He’d gone so soon after the wedding. Barely a month later, and he’d ridden for White Harbor, and a ship that would take him across the narrow seas to some sellsword company, or some other adventure.

Arya drove her fork into the cut of mutton that Rickon had just finished slicing for her, already annoyed that she had to keep her arm in a sling and it had only been several hours. “My father always said there weren’t actually unicorns on Skagos,” Steffon was saying to Rickon. The two were leaning close together, to better hear one another over the noise of the hall.

“Just goats,” Rickon responds eagerly. “Big ones. But goats all the same.”

“Do they only have one horn?”

“Aye. A big one, right in the middle of their foreheads. But they’re not unicorns. At least…not like the unicorns in the songs. I suppose they are technically unicorns since they only have one horn.”

“I’d quite like to see one,” Steffon says, “Devan got to see everything when we were children, and there wasn’t anything left for me to see by the time I grew older.”

“Well, since you’re in the North…” Rickon’s voice was eager and his eyes were bright, and Arya blinked for just a moment before turning away from the two of them to look down the table. She catches Meera’s eye and her queen smiles at her.

“I’m sad you did not win your tilt,” Meera says quietly. Arya can’t hear her, but Meera knows Arya’s good enough at reading lips for it.

“Me as well,” Arya says, shrugging and then wincing.

She finds Gendry in her room after dinner. He’s already undressed, and for a moment, Arya thinks he’s asleep. But he turns onto his side as she closes and bars the door, and she sees his eyes glinting in the candlelight. As Arya begins to undress, he slides out from under the blankets, and helps her out of her tunic, kissing her sore shoulder as he does. She closes her eyes and sinks back into him. She feels very tired, all of a sudden, and he is very warm behind her.

He kisses his way from her shoulder to the crook of her neck, brushing hair aside, and Arya feels heat pool in her stomach as his hand slides over her stomach and down between her legs.

“I want to,” she whispers, “But I won’t be much fun tonight.” She’s fucked on a hurt shoulder before and it had not been pleasant at all. She swallows as Gendry’s fingers continue to coax her flesh.

“Are you sure?” he whispers to her. Her breath isn’t coming easily, but Arya nods, and Gendry sighs and his hand is gone. He holds her close for a moment, her back still to his stomach, and she can feel him half-hard behind her.

“I know you’re fighting tomorrow,” she begins, but Gendry makes a shushing noise.

He pulls her towards the bed and they lie down next to each other, Arya flat on her back and Gendry with his head on her stomach, just under her breasts. He twists it to look up at her, then kisses the base of her sternum.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“I wanted to win. I wanted to win the whole damn thing. I thought I could. But I couldn’t even beat Ned Dayne.”

“You weren’t feeling well.”

“Yes, but I’ll never have another shot at it, will I? When’s the next time that Bran’s going to host a tourney?” Gendry doesn’t reply. In the candlelight, Arya wonders if she imagined his eyes flickering for just a moment. “My aunt Lyanna rode as a mystery knight in a tourney once.”

“Did she win?”

Arya shook her head.

“So you’re in good company, then.”

“She only didn’t win because the Mad King threatened to kill her,” Arya says. “And she was crowned queen of love and beauty. Not that…well…not that that was a good thing.” Arya won’t be crowned queen of love and beauty—no one would crown her. Even if Gendry were riding instead of fighting in the melee, he’d have to crown Shireen and not her. And if Ned wins the whole thing, he’d crown Sansa, not Arya. _I didn’t want to be the stupid queen, though. I wanted to crown her._

It was as though Gendry had heard her thoughts. “Who would you have crowned queen of love and beauty?” A rush of warmth filled her. It was like when they’d been young, and said things at the same time, the way she and Jon had.

“You,” she teases.

Gendry snorts. “I think that a crown of flowers would match my whites quite nicely,” he says. “Am I truly beautiful?”

“You spend too much time with Steffon,” she says, rolling her eyes.

“Perhaps,” Gendry sighs. “Easier him than…” his voice trails away. “My usual companions aren’t in the North now, so I suppose I had to find someone.”

Arya lifts her head slightly to look at him and he sighs. “Aelgenth,” he tells her. “Steffon’s more for japes than she is, and without her company, I sought it elsewhere on the ride north. And Steffon’s a good fellow, and easier to talk to than Edric.”

“You don’t like Edric?” It was the first time Arya had heard him mention his half-brother.

Gendry’s lips twitch. “He’s fine. He and I aren’t the same, though. He’s an able lord commander, and a puissant warrior, and if anyone’s going to beat Ned Dayne tomorrow, it’ll be him. But we’re not close. I’m not really close to any of the other kingsguard. It’s mostly Aelgenth.”

Arya frowns. “I’d have thought you’d be closer with them,” she says. “You were always looking for…” _Pack._

Gendry nods against her stomach, his beard brushing against her skin. “I was. And I found it, after a fashion. But Aelgenth was always easier than they were. They were all the sons of lords, and raised in castles, and when the war was ended, they were fast to forget where I’d come from once I was all in white. And…I can’t forget that. I can’t forget the taste of bowls of brown, or the smell of shit and vomit in back alleys that easy. I can’t forget you, or Hot Pie, or Lommy Greenhands, or the Tickler and the Mountain, or Beric, or—or any of it.”

“But Aelgenth is the daughter of a blacksmith,” Arya says, and she understands. _She’s a taste of home, a taste of what you can’t forget. And I’m everything they are and you’re not._

It makes her sad. She runs a hand through Gendry’s hair, and he closes his eyes and sighs.

“I’m glad you have her.” The words are knives in her heart. “I’m glad you’re not alone.”

She hears Gendry swallow, feels him press his lips to her stomach again, and when he says the words, they sound as though they slip from between his lips without his thinking them through. “I’m glad I have you.”

Arya’s mouth goes dry. He shouldn’t be saying that. He shouldn’t be.

“What does that mean?”

He kisses her stomach again. “You came back for me. You always did. No one else ever did. I’m glad I have you.”

Arya makes to sit up, but her shoulder jabs at her again and she gasps.

“Stop that,” Gendry tells her, rolling his eyes. He sits up, and shifts his position, curling around her, holding her bad shoulder in place. “You need to get better.”

“You’re just saying that so we can fuck again,” Arya says shakily, hoping the joke hides her roiling thoughts.

“You know me so well,” he says mulishly, and Arya twists her face towards his.

Their kisses are light, and slow, and pleasant, and the perfect thing to fall asleep to.

* * *

Her shoulder keeps hurting her in the night, and Arya can barely sleep. At first, she’d thought that Gendry’s warmth pressed against it would help, but before the night is through, she’s already pulled away from him and is lying with her back to him to keep her shoulder in the air. It throbs, and she hates it.  _I never get dizzy,_ she thinks angrily at herself.  _Not once. I’ve gone longer without food and fought harder._

A voice, one that sounds suspiciously like Sansa, tells her that she should get over it. _You lost. You’re not perfect, and you’re not a great warrior—you’re a great commander. That doesn’t make you the best fighter on the field._

All the same, she hates it.

The night wears on, and twice, she feels Gendry grow hard next to her before he goes flaccid again. _What does he dream of?_ She remembers Larence telling her he couldn’t remember her dreams, and she remembers Olyvar also going hard in his sleep. _Men’s bodies are strange,_ she thinks. And yet every man she’s ever met treats a woman’s body as a mystery, and goes ashen faced when reminded that she bleeds once a month. Every one of them, without fail. Except the maesters.

She wonders if the maesters study why it is that men go hard in their sleep, or if it is as simple as a dream.

Maester Donnel had told her she’d need to keep her arm in a sling for several weeks. Already she hates it and it’s been less than a day. If it had been her right arm, that would be different, but it had been her shield arm that Ned had struck with his lance, and she’d always used that arm for everything. She hadn’t realized how little she used her right arm until it was the only thing she was allowed to use. She shifted again, flipping to her back, and staring up at the ceiling. _I’ve had worse injuries,_ she reminds herself. She runs her right hand over the scars on her stomach where a waif’s knife had struck once, twice, three times. _You’re lucky to be alive, still._

Gendry clears his throat in his sleep, and Arya looks at him in the darkness. He looks younger when he slept—less worried. She likes it when he looked less worried, even if he had always been the type to worry. _He’s always been there for me,_ she thinks fondly, before the thought changes. _He’ll be gone soon._

She knows it. She knows he’ll be leaving soon. Perhaps not immediately, for it is unclear how long the queen intends to stay, but one day he’ll ride south and leave her again. It hits her harder than it should. _He’s not supposed to leave me,_ she thinks, and yet somehow he always had. Even while he had told her that she always came back for him. It was all muddled. All wrong. Nothing was ever right.

 _You knew he couldn’t stay, you stupid,_ she tells herself. _You knew this would be fleeting. It was supposed to be fun. He’s not yours—he’s_ Gendry.

But all the same. All the same…

She sits up and Gendry makes that noise again. She looks at him, and he mumbles. “What’s wrong?”

“Can’t sleep.”

“Does it hurt? Do you want me to get you another block of ice?” Warmth floods through her. She’s quite sure she’ll have ice on it for a good deal of the morrow while watching the rest of the tourney. She shakes her head. She uses her right arm to shift onto her knees, and then climbs over him, straddling his hips. Gendry smirks up at her. He’d been half hard from sleep already, and his hand slides between her legs. “I thought you didn’t want to,” he says.

“We’ll be careful,” she tells him. He wasn’t going anywhere yet, and even if he couldn’t be hers forever, at least he’d be hers now.

Gendry twists underneath her and reaches to grab something from the floor. The sling for her shoulder. He sits up and drapes it around her head, then helps her arm into it. She winces at the movement.

“Tight enough?” he asks her.

“It rather destroys the mood, don’t you think?”

“I think you doing something to your shoulder would destroy it even more,” he points out.

“I was going to be careful.”

“And I want to make you forget yourself,” he whispers in her ear before lying back down on the bed. He looks up at her. There’s no candlelight, no firelight, no anything. It’s just the two of them. The muscles of his stomach and chest bulge, and he traces fingers over the scars on her stomach again. Lower and lower they go until he’s brushing them through the hair of her mound and dipping them to her slit. Arya sighs at his touch, the way he takes her nub between his thumb and another finger and rolls it until wet heat is dripping from her all over his balls. She rocks her hips into his hand, and his fingers slide down to her opening and he slides two inside her, pumping them in and out, stretching her around him.

She lifts herself slowly, carefully, and finds his cock and guides him into her. How sweetly he fills her, how right it feels. She begins ride him, flexing the muscles in her legs as she slides along his length. He has a hand on her hips, guiding her, and the other hand is lower, resting along the seam of her thigh, his thumb on her nub and every time she presses onto him, his thumb presses into her, sending a sweet jolt through her every time she moves, one that is so much better than the ache in her shoulder. _I want to make you forget yourself,_ he’d said. Did he know how much he did, though? How the whole world seemed to fade when it was just the two of them, how her heart soared at the sight of him, how he made her feel as he held her hips in his hands, guiding her onto his cock? She wasn’t sure he could, and yet how couldn’t he?

She rests her right hand on top of his hand as she moves. Her legs are growing tired, but she doesn’t care. She doesn’t care if she aches, she doesn’t care about anything except the way he’s filling her now, the way his skin feels, the sound of his breath as she moves faster and faster, the way his cock is twitching inside her. But no—no, she doesn’t want him to come yet. She’s not ready for it to be over. So she slows. She slows, and Gendry’s eyes flicker to her face, and he raises an eyebrow at her. She slows, but she doesn’t stop, and Gendry’s thumb presses into her and heat floods her body, warm waves of it as her head lolls, and she breathes deeply and lets herself fall forward onto him.

“Careful,” he says, grabbing her right shoulder to keep her from landing hard against his chest, but it’s not quite enough, and she lets out a whimper as her left stings in protest.

“Well, you did make me forget,” she says dryly, and rolls onto her side again. Gendry pulls his cock out of her, and with two quick pumps of his hand, he cries out, and she feels his seed on her stomach. “I could have done that,” she whispers, kissing his neck, trying to keep the annoyance out of her voice. She likes making him fall apart. She’d been planning to do it except he’d gone and made her come first.

“I know,” he replies. “You did,” and his lips find hers.

She rolls her eyes. “No, you did.”

“And who was I thinking about, I wonder.”

“That’s all well and good, but I wasn’t the one who—”

“Does it bother you that much?”

“A little.” It is stupid, and she knows it, but…but she doesn’t want to think of him without her, not needing her the way she needs him.

“Then you can owe me one,” Gendry says. “And you can make sure it’s a good one, how does that sound?”

“Stupid,” she says, and Gendry laughs, and his fingers slide between her legs again, petting her tender flesh.

“Well, it’s the only idea I have at the moment.”

Arya sighs, and lets her legs fall open. She doesn’t think he’s going to make her come again, but it feels nice, his hand there, so very gentle.

She’s not sure when she falls asleep, but when she wakes up, Gendry’s snoring next to her, and his hand is still on her cunt.

* * *

There are fifteen of them fighting in the melee, and, to his surprise, Gendry is not the biggest of them. There’s an Umber present, who looms several inches above Gendry, his shoulders wide, his helmet huge. Gendry can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. He’s fought in enough melees to know that a tried and true strategy for smaller fighters is to team up to take on the big one, and if Gendry’s not the big one, well…it means he won’t be defending himself the whole bloody time.

He glances at the stands only once before they take to their circle, and sees Arya sitting next to Bran, her arm in its sling. For all she’d interrupted his sleep the night before, he felt well rested, and the memory of her coming on top of him was enough to get his heart up again as he reached for his sword.

 _You should be thinking about honoring your queen,_ he berates himself. He’s fighting for Shireen after all. And yet for all the time he’s spent in her company over the years it all fades next to Arya. _This can’t continue,_ he tells himself for the millionth time, knowing that telling himself that won’t stop it.

All the same, he tries. He must try.

Edric wished Gendry would fight with a war hammer in the melee. “ _Remind everyone whose son you are._ ” But Gendry’d never fought with a war hammer in his life. He’d learned how to fight with a sword over the years, he was going to bloody well use it. And besides, if Edric couldn’t forget who Gendry’s father was, it seemed unlikely anyone else would either.

The banner waves, and they start forward.

Gendry’s standing across from Rickon, whose shield is already raised in defense while Marq Vance charges for Jon Umber. _He’d be easy prey,_ Gendry thinks, before turning towards Umber as well. He knows Arya would never forgive him for knocking her little brother out of his first melee, even if he was so green that it’d be easy. Rickon joins in the gambit against Umber and it’s not too long before the man is lying flat on his back on the ground, and the three of them step away, swords raised, looking at one another warily.

It’s an easy melee, as far as melees go. Vance is a strong knight, but he’s not spent his days training with Edric, and Rickon’s fierce, but he’s young and makes foolish mistakes that means that Gawen Royce is able to catch him off guard and it’s not long before he yields.

The field ends with Gendry facing Ser Hosteen Fossoway, and they stare each other down for a good few seconds before Gendry lets out a yell and charges. Fossoway sidesteps, but Gendry catches him in the side. He raises his shield, and Gendry throws his weight behind his sword. “ _You’ve got an anger in you,_ ” he remembers Thoros telling him, “ _Use it. Fire’s good in a warrior—especially a warrior for the lord of light._ ” He’s not angry now, not the same way he was when he was younger, but he doesn’t need anger to fight hard anymore. Fossoway stumbles as Gendry assails him, striking again and again on his apple covered shield, and when he falls to the ground, and yells that he yields, Gendry turns to face the stands and is met with thunderous cheers. He removes his helmet and kneels before Shireen, his sword point in the ground. He tries not to smile. He wants to look serious, but the cheers continue, and when he does look around, he’s a bit bewildered.

King’s Landing is one thing. He’s King Robert’s bastard, and his mother was from Flea Bottom. He knows the city as well as any of the commons who attend the tourneys in Shireen’s honor, but here, in Winterfell… _I’m Robert’s son, and they loved their Ned Stark,_ he thinks, but he somehow doubts that’s it. _Do they remember me from the war? Do they know I love her?_

His eyes flicker to Arya. She can’t applaud, but she’s beating her right hand against her knee in a show of support, and she’s grinning her lovely grin, and he feels his heart swell.

“Rise, Ser Gendry,” King Bran bids him, and he stands and the applause fade away. “You fought valiantly today. I’m not surprised. Well do we all remember how well you fought for Winterfell during the long night.” He hears someone shout out again and a rush fills him. “I have a champion’s purse for you, though it is meager in truth, for there isn’t enough coin in the world to thank you for the service you have done Winterfell.”

“Your Grace,” Gendry says, bowing, and the cheers begin again. They follow Gendry off the field and into the tent where he finds Arya waiting for him. She kisses him deeply, and he smiles against her lips.

“I knew you’d win,” she tells him, reaching up and beginning to unfasten his armor.

“I didn’t,” he says. She’s slower than a squire would be, since she only has one arm that she can really use, but Gendry doesn’t care. He’s glad it’s her and not someone else.

“I didn’t think they’d remember,” he tells her. “The northerners. I didn’t think they’d remember me.”

“The North remembers,” Arya smiles. “It’s all there is to do in winter up here.”

Gendry snorts, and Arya kisses him again. “You fought bravely. Of course they’ll remember that. You’re a hero.”

“I’m not. That’s you with your wolves and magic.”

“There can be more than one hero of a story, you know,” she says.

_I’m not a Stark of Winterfell, though. It was never going to be me._

But they remembered him all the same.

* * *

 

Arya watches as Larence tilts Ned right out of his saddle the next day, and her stomach churns. Bad enough that she’d lost to Ned, but now Ned had lost to Larence. She knows that he’ll think it’s a sign that he’s better than her at all this, and all of the nasty things he thinks of her are true.

“At least it wasn’t you?” Bran whispers to her, taking her hand. She glances at him. He’s smiling at her gently, hopefully, wanting his words to make it easier but she can see in his eyes that he doesn’t truly believe that they do. She squeezes his hand and watches as Larence rides the length of the lists and Ned gets slowly to his feet. He doesn’t faint as he tries to rise, and Arya bites her lip.

The final tilt will be on the morrow, and it will be between Larence and Edric Storm, and as much as Arya wants the North to win, she doesn’t think she wants it quite that much. _I should put personal grievances behind me,_ she reminds herself. It’s the honor of the North, of Bran’s kingdom, after all. What does it matter if Larence Hornwood wins?

It’s a thought that chases her all the way back to the castle as she walks beside Meera, Bran’s chair just in front of them.

“I like this tourney,” Meera says to her quietly. “Mayhaps we’ll have one again. Not right away, but sometime. The people are thrilled with it.”

Arya glances up ahead. Sansa’s walking arm in arm with her husband, and she is smiling. Sansa always loved tourneys. _I must remember that the others are happy._

 _And Gendry won._ She looks around for him, but he isn’t nearby. _He probably stayed behind with Devan._ King Devan had wanted to show baby Robert the tourney grounds.

“Perhaps when we’ve something else to celebrate,” Arya suggests. “A wedding, or…” she doesn’t let herself finish that thought, though. She won’t say it. _Bran is worth more than his seed, just as I am worth more than my womb. So what if we are both childless?_ So long as there was Rickon, and even Sansa, there wolf blood would not die. And it wasn’t as though that wasn’t a thought that Meera had to face every time one of their lords bannermen came to Winterfell.

“I will say, I’m surprised that more of them aren’t after your skirts this time,” Meera teases.

“I think I’ve proven to them I shan’t be wed,” Arya sighs.

“Or perhaps they’ve noticed who it is you spend your nights with.”

Arya pinches her, and Meera laughs. “Someone must tease you for it. I’ve not seen you so happy in years, sister.”

Arya bites her lip. _And I’ll be sad when it’s over, and he’s gone again._ Meera’s eyes flicker and Arya wishes that she’d kept her face still, because Meera’s arm goes from her arm to around her waist, and her goodsister rests her head on Arya’s shoulder.

“Life will go on,” she says. “We still love you. And the North is glad of you, even if Ned Dayne did knock you from your horse.”

“Better him than Larence.” If she’d won the tilt against Ned, but been dizzy for the one against Larence…

“Aye,” Meera agrees.

The rest of the afternoon is quiet. Arya spends it with Bran in his solar, reading through accounts that Wylla Manderly had brought from her grandfather in White Harbor. Lord Manderly wants them to raise tariffs in the port, and Shireen would have them not do that, but the numbers won’t add up. It’s nice to have something to distract her from the fact that when the Tourney is over, it will only be a matter of time before Gendry leaves her again, from her aching shoulder, from Larence Hornwood. _This is what matters,_ Arya thinks as she and Bran scratch out numbers onto parchment to see if they can find some middle ground. _The North, and Bran’s rule. Everything else doesn’t matter._

That’s what she tells herself that night at dinner when she hears Larence’s laughter louder than everyone else’s, when the southron knights who had ridden with Gendry get him too drunk to speak properly in celebration of his victory and, when they return to her bedchamber, he’s too limp to fuck the thoughts from her mind, and ends up falling asleep half-dressed.

That’s what she tells herself when she stares up at the ceiling of the bedroom that she’d shared with Sansa as a girl, and tries to keep herself from wondering why it is that everyone who shared this bed with her somehow managed to hurt her.


	5. Chapter 5

When Larence Hornwood wins the tournament the next day, Gendry is standing next to Arya, and though he knows he promised Edric he’d not make any show of anything, Edric had just gotten knocked on his bloody arse, and Gendry’s head still hurts from all the wine Edric had made him drink the night before, and so he puts his hand on Arya’s shoulder.   

He squeezes his hand as Larence rides the wreath of blue winter roses over to his betrothed and she places them on her green hair.  And Arya places her hand on his when Hornwood rears his horse and brings himself before Bran, and Bran’s pronouncement that he is the champion’s victor, and he brings honor to the North. 

“Well, that’s that,” Arya mutters, getting to her feet as soon as it’s over and stepping down from the dais.  Gendry follows her.  She’s walking quickly, and Gendry knows that she’s fuming.   

“At least the North won,” she tells him, but he’s sure that that’s not what she’s truly thinking.  He knows far better than to say that, though.  He’s no fool. 

They are back at the castle before anyone else, and Arya leads him towards the godswood. 

“Do you want to be alone?” he asks her.  She doesn’t reply, and he grimaces.  If it were Aelgenth, he’d know, for Aelgenth always answered his questions whenever he had them.  Arya usually expected him to infer the answers, and for the most part he could.  But not right now. 

He follows her to the godswood, and they pass the hotsprings before Arya stops short, and Gendry almost walks into her before seeing exactly why she had stopped short. 

Rickon is sitting beneath a tree, sitting very close to Steffon Seaworth. 

Very close.   

Their heads are inches apart…until they’re not anymore.  Arya whirls around and grabs Gendry’s hand, dragging him out of the godswood, and Gendry’s body follows her, but his head is twisted about to stare at the two of them, kissing beneath the trees. 

“Not a word,” Arya hisses at him. 

“I won’t say anything,” Gendry tells her. 

“Not a single word,” she says.  She’s climbing up to the castle walls now, and Gendry follows her up.  She walks halfway to the next tower before stopping and staring out over the moors. 

“Damn,” she whispers.  “I…I didn’t think…I…”  She looks at Gendry.  “Did you know?” 

“Know what?” 

“That Steffon…” her voice trails away.   

Gendry shakes his head.  “He’s never really been interested in girls, but I never thought.”  He can’t get the image of them kissing out of his mind.  He knows that some men kissed men.  He hadn’t been raised under a rock.  But all the same… 

He watches Arya.   _Is s_ _he upset?  Should I_ _comfort her?_ “He’s still a fine man, and strong warrior, regardless of—” 

It’s the wrong thing to say.  Arya glares at him.  “I know that,” she says mulishly.  “I don’t need you thinking something’s wrong with my brother just because he wants to kiss men.” 

Gendry blinks.  “I didn’t—” 

“Really?” she demands, crossing her arms.  She’s angry, he can see that now.   

“Truly.  I didn’t.  I mean, it’s not natural, but it’s—” 

“Oh, stop talking.  You’ll just make it worse for yourself,” she snaps, turning to face the moors again.   

“What’s that supposed to mean?  What did I do?” 

“Nothing,” she says.  “You didn’t do anything.” 

Gendry’s no fool, and he’s known Arya Stark more than half his life, and he knows well enough when she’s not telling everything. 

“It’s not my bloody fault Larence Hornwood won today,” he says heatedly, lowering his voice.  “And it’s not my bloody fault that you’re angry and you know it.  Don’t take it out on me.” 

“I’ll take it out on whoever I like,” she snaps.  “You think something’s wrong with Rickon.” 

“I don’t!”  He does, but it doesn’t matter, and it’s not like he’ll ever confess that to Arya. 

“My brother deserves happiness.” 

“And if it’s Steffon Seaworth, what bloody business is it of mine?” 

“Exactly,” Arya says.  “It’s none of your bloody business. He deserves to find someone who thinks he’s wonderful, and who’ll hold him, and won’t ever leave him, and will love him until they’re old and grey.” 

And Gendry understands.  “We’re not talking about Rickon anymore, are we?” 

Arya doesn’t look at him.   

Gendry curses. 

This was precisely what  _wasn’t_  supposed to happen. 

“You knew I was going to leave,” he says.  “You said it wouldn’t matter.  You said you didn’t want someone who’d marry you, or stay with you forever.  You said it was just a bit of fun.” 

“It’s what it is,” Arya says.  “But…it doesn’t matter.”  She seems to sag against the stone of the parapet.  “I’ll be fine.  Don’t worry.  I just…You’ll leave.  And it will be over, just like I knew it would.  And we’ll forget all this happened.” 

“If you like,” Gendry says.  “I won’t though.”  She stiffens.  “I won’t forget this.  I can’t forget you.”  His vows can allow that much.  If it’s over, and she’s far away, he can still love her, dream of her, even if he devotes his full attention to Shireen once again. 

“You’ll forget me the moment you get back to your red priestess.” 

Gendry shakes his head.  “Never,” he promises.  “I never will.” 

Arya’s running her fingers over the stone.  She’s still not looking at him.  “Well, that will have to be enough.” 

“I swore vows, Arya.”  He hates them.  Hates his vows, hates himself for speaking of them now, hates that he’d come north just to hurt her all over again. 

“I know.”  She makes an exasperated noise.  “I used to make fun of Sansa for being a dreamer, but look at me.” 

“It’s a sweet dream,” Gendry says quietly. 

“Sweet dreams hurt as much as nightmares sometimes.” 

Gendry imagines staying with her, of taking her in his arms every day until he dies, of watching their children running about in the yards below, of never being called Ser Gendry ever again, but whatever it is that Arya wants him called.   _A sweet dream._  

He looks at Arya.  Her eyes are bright as she looks out over the North.  He can’t tell if those are tears in his eyes, and he’s not sure he wants to know, not sure he  _ever_  wants to know.   _And it wounds as much as nightmares._

* * *

Arya begins to breathe more deeply when Larence departs three days later.  Though he was the victor of the tourney, he seems to have no interest in remaining in Winterfell longer than is seemly, and Arya can’t help but be glad of that.   

He is the first to depart, and slowly others do as well.  A week after the tourney is over, Winterfell is already emptier than it had been since Shireen’s arrival in the North. 

But for all she is more relaxed without Larence being nearby, the more that people leave the castle, the more that Arya sits there wondering,  _When_ _will he leave?_  

When Robert had come north when she’d been a girl, he’d barely been here a month, and Shireen’s party has been here that long now.  It feels like they’ve been here years, but maybe that’s Gendry, and the way she feels alive in his arms and the way that every moment spent in his company seems to simultaneously stretch longer than it has any right, and to pass more quickly than she wants.   

“I imagine we’ll leave in a week or two,” she hears Devan telling Bran after breakfast.  “My lord father is old, and while I’m sure he steers the lands well in our absence, he deserves a good break.” 

 _And that will be that,_ she tells herself.   _Just like you knew it would._  

But she can’t help but be jealous of Rickon, who is planning on riding north with Steffon Seaworth once the queen’s party departs.  Steffon wants to see where the Wall stood, maybe even visit Skagos, and Rickon intends to go to the Starkfort and make sure that everything is in proper order in his castle.   _Steffon can go where he likes.  He’s a youngest son, just like Rickon._  

She thinks she sees them sharing glances, and notices a purple blotch on Rickon’s neck that she doesn’t remark upon.   _Let him be in love.  Let him be happy._  

 _Happier than me._  

Because she does love Gendry.  She’d realized that the moment she’d seen Rickon and Steffon in the godswood.  Perhaps she’d loved him from the day he had arrived and they’d fucked in the rain, or perhaps she always had loved him.  She doesn’t know.  It didn’t really matter.  What matters is that he is leaving, and she is determined not to let the impending loss of him break her heart in advance.   

Her shoulder is starting to feel better. Maester Donnel tells her she is recovering quickly from it, but he insists she still wear a sling over her arm.  And she does, except for when she’s in bed with Gendry.   

Their lovemaking has become more desperate—or maybe that’s just the way she thinks about it.  Maybe that’s just that she feels more desperate for his touch than she had before, now that he’ll be gone soon.  It’s only when he’s inside her that she’s able to really forget that it’s not for forever, only when his lips are on hers, his hands on her arse, or her breasts, spreading fire throughout her body.   

Gendry hardly talks of leaving.  He doesn’t hide that it’s not on his mind, at least.  He seems gloomy and angry when they aren’t in bed together, far more like the boy she’d known all those years before and less like the man who’d grown more relaxed as status and friendship had become stable parts of his life.   _There’s nothing I can do to ease that,_ she thinks sadly.  Bitterly, she wishes Aelgenth luck with him, for she knows Gendry well enough to know he’ll be unbearable after he leaves her. 

It’s almost a comfort.  Almost…

* * *

She catches Steffon Seaworth coming out of Rickon’s bedchamber in the earliest hours of the morning and he stops dead in his tracks, looking suddenly very nervous. 

“Good morrow, my lady.  I’d not thought you’d be awake,” he says.  His voice is breathy, for all it’s low, and Arya puts her right hand on her hip.  “I was just seeing if Rickon was awake and wished to spar.” 

Arya snorts, and looks Steffon dead in the eye.  “You seem plenty nice, but if you hurt him I will kill you.  I hope you know that.” 

“I don’t know what you mean,” Steffon says, and Arya rolls her eyes and pushes past him.  “My lady!” he yelps as she pushes open the door to Rickon’s bedroom. 

Her brother is awake, and naked and he leaps for his bed and a blanket as Arya comes inside.  She closes the door behind her, even as Steffon begins to speak, leaving him outside while she bars the door. 

“I can explain,” Rickon says wildly, his eyes wide and terrified, but Arya holds up a hand and he closes his mouth.  His face is so red, and it clashes with his auburn hair and Arya comes and sits down on the bed next to him. 

“Has it always been boys?” she asks him evenly.  She tries to sound gentle, the way that her father had when she’d been a girl.  But she’s not sure she manages.  

Rickon’s face crumples.  “I kissed Marla Cassel once,” he confides.   

“And Bryan Lake?” 

“Bryan’s just a friend,” Rickon says quickly.  “I promise.  He’d want…he’s…”  He looks down at his hands, and his eyes are suddenly bright.   _He is so young,_ Arya reminds herself. 

“I’m not angry with you,” she says, “And I don’t think you’re wrong for doing what you do.  I just think you’re young, Rickon.” 

Rickon looks up at her, sharply.  “You don’t think I’m…that I…I’m broken?” 

Arya shrugs.  “Just because a man would fuck a woman doesn’t make him a better man than you.  I’ve seen all kinds of men in my life, and I’d sooner have you respectful and tender with a man, than harsh with a woman.”  She thinks of Gendry, and how gentle he is with her, except when she wants him rougher and then he’s that.   _I’m not his right, or his conquest like Larence thought I was.  I’m a person._   If Rickon can be that way, then that’s some victory, she supposes.  “I want you happy.  And besides,” she adds, “It’s not fucking someone that makes them more or less a man.  Usually lesser men think that.” 

Rickon nods slowly.  “I think I love him, Arya,” he whispers.  “I…I’ve not been in love before, though.  But I think I am.” 

Arya smiles, and cups Rickon’s cheek.  “Then love him,” she says.  “I don’t suppose I could stop it, though I suppose it means you’re truly not a child anymore.” 

“I’ve not been a child for a while,” he says, more out of habit than anything. 

“You’ll always be the babe frightened of Shaggy to me,” Arya teases.  She kisses his cheek.  “Remember—you’re not alone, and I…” she’ll what?  Listen if his heart is broken.  “I love you, and want you happy.  You deserve it.” 

A smile slowly spreads over Rickon’s face, and he positively beams at her.  He wraps his arms around her and Arya yelps at the twinge in her shoulder.  “Sorry!” he says, releasing her at once. 

Arya shakes her head and gets to her feet.   

When she steps outside of Rickon’s door, she finds Steffon sitting on the floor in front of it.   _He didn’t flee.  That speaks well of him,_ Arya thinks.  The door is still open, and she doesn’t care if Rickon hears her.   _He should hear._  

“I meant it,” she tells Steffon.  “If you do anything to hurt him, I will kill you.” 

“Yes my lady,” Steffon squeaks, and Arya shakes her head as she walks down the hall towards the stairs.

* * *

Time goes too quickly, and Gendry wishes he could make it slow.  He remembers Aelgenth telling him some parable about an hourglass, how time seems to go faster when there is less sand at the top of the hourglass, but in truth it travels at the same speed it always has.  He wishes he could block the sand and trap it up top. 

“The queen wishes to leave at the end of the week,” Edric tells him one afternoon, and he grunts as his only response.  Edric raises an eyebrow. 

“I’ll be ready,” he says, though the words feel like daggers in his mouth.   _Good.  It should hurt.  I’ve broken my vows, but my vows have the right of it, not me._  

“And the queen wishes to ride in the Wolfswood today,” Edric adds.  “Lady Arya offered to take her on a ride through it.  She’ll be going, as will the king, and Prince Robert.” 

The riding party is a small one.  Queen Meera and Ned Dayne are coming with them as well, along with Prince Robert’s nursemaid.  Queen Meera has her bow and arrow with her.  “Is it to be a hunt?” he asks her, noticing that Arya has a knife in her belt as well. 

“No,” Meera tells him.  “Not for venison, at least.  If I see a hare, though, I may bring one back.  I have boots in need of a new lining before the winter.” 

The sun is hot overhead, and Gendry is glad when they enter the shade of the woods, making their way along a well-travelled road.   

“If we were to travel a week along the road, we’d reach Deepwood Motte,” Arya tells Ned Dayne. 

“Being so far North makes me wish that I could see more of it,” Devan tells Meera. 

“You should join your brother.  I hear Rickon’s going to take him on a tour.”   

“I’m sure Steffon won’t want my company on that.  I’d only slow them down.”  That makes Gendry smirk some. 

He looks at Arya, hoping she’ll share a glance with him, but she’s too subtle for that.   

“Your direwolf was here during the war, wasn’t she?” Shireen asks Arya. 

“Aye.  The vestiges of the great pack still are, though they are deeper in.” 

“You must miss her.” 

“More than I can say.  But no direwolf lives forever.” 

Gendry wants to say something.  He’d not thought to tell Arya how sorry he was that Nymeria had passed, because he knew how much she loved the wolf.   _As much as she loved her bastard brother._ _As if they were a part of her._  

They had died years before, though.  And their deaths had hurt, he’s sure, but… _It’_ _s_ _be different from Stoneheart._ How could it not be? 

Gendry hears a snapping sound behind him, like a branch that’s breaking, and he twists in his saddle, squinting through the trees.   _A deer, perhaps, or—_  

His horse rears and screams, and Gendry leaps from its back as it falls, blood gushing from its flank.  He rolls on the ground, tugging his sword from its sheath and bearing the steel.  

There are ten of them, just from a quick glance, and only he and Edric are armed, though Meera’s already got an arrow in her bow.  They are all armed with axes and spears, and their hair is matted, their eyes hungry. 

“Cover the queen!” Edric barks.  He’s still on horseback, and he charges forward, steel in hand, and Gendry puts himself between one of the brigands and Queen Shireen. 

It’s loud, and everything is moving quickly, and Gendry wishes he had a helm with him.  But how were they to have known?  Surely Arya wouldn’t have let them ride out if they’d known there were brigands along the road to Deepwood Motte. 

Gendry makes quick work of the two who approach Shireen, and is relieved to see that the Sword of the Morning has grabbed one of the fallen men’s axes and is trying to defend the king.  But he is awkward with an axe and Gendry calls out to him.  “Dayne.  Here.”  He grabs an axe from the ground and holds out his sword to Ned, who takes it without a word of thanks.  There is no time.  

He hears a high-pitched shriek, but he can’t let himself look around—not yet.  There are still five of them fighting, and even if Dayne is armed now, none of them have proper armor, and the remaining brigands all have pikes.   _If they get the horses…_  

Gendry charges, yelling loudly, swinging the axe hard, and he wonders if the fear in the eyes of the brigand he lands on is what his father saw when he’d been young and on the battlefield.  He sees Edric riding down another of them, and Ned Dayne covers both Shireen and Devan now.   

Arrows sprout out of the last one, and he’s glad of Queen Meera’s bow as he lets the axe fall from his hand and look around. 

His horse is dead, and there’s another one on the ground.  Queen Meera is standing over Prince Robert’s nursemaid, who is on the ground, covered in blood and crying and— 

Gendry’s mouth goes dry. 

“Where’s the prince?” he demands, his voice filling the clearing like a thunderclap. 

“No,” Shireen moans from the back of her horse.  “No, no no.” 

Gendry looks around wildly, searching for Arya, because Arya will know what to do, she will know these woods better than any of them.   _They’re her wolf’s woods._ But she’s nowhere to be found, either.   _She only had a dagger on her,_ Gendry thinks, his stomach sinking in horror because Arya was just stupid enough to go after someone with just a dagger if she was on horseback.   

He sees the signs of hooves in the dirt, and the linen sling for her shoulder lying on the ground, and he doesn’t hesitate.  He grabs the reins of the king’s horse.  “May I, your grace?” he asks, but he does not wait for an answer before he mounts and kicks the horse into motion and rides off through the woods, grabbing the sword that Ned Dayne is holding out to him as he goes.

* * *

Arya’s racing.  Black Aly is galloping as fast as she can, but Arya feels completely still, completely calm.  The brigand is ahead of her by ten feet, maybe, on Meera’s horse, and she knows Froglegs well, and knows the horse will tire long before Black Aly does.  She can wait.   _I know these woods better than you,_ she thinks angrily.   _I have feasted on flesh in these woods in the body of a wolf._  

She wishes Nymeria were still alive.  That would stop Froglegs in her track, for Meera’s horse had never much liked the scent of direwolves.  But then again, Froglegs might rear, and that would be dangerous for Robert.  Robert is crying.  She can hear him sobbing as loudly as his little boy’s lungs will let him, screaming for his father, his mother, for help.   

“I’m behind you,” Arya calls to him.  “You can’t outrun me and I’m behind you.  If you stop, I’ll be merciful.”  Her offer does not seem to interest him. 

So they ride.  They ride into the thickets of the wood, weaving through trees, leaping over fallen branches.  They’re heading south, Arya thinks, because she can hear the river in the distance.   _Fool,_ she thinks.   _I’ll have you trapped if you hit the river._  

He must be more panicked than she is.  He’d have to be.  He is the one running with a prince in his arms and a Stark of Winterfell on his tail.   

She is right: they reach the river, and he pulls on Froglegs’ reins trying to decide which direction to go in.  South will take him to Winterfell, and Arya rounds Black Aly to his northern side right as he turns.  Froglegs rears in surprise, and he loses control of the horse as Arya leaps from Black Aly’s back.  She grabs Froglegs’ reins and the brigand reaches for his knife, stabbing at her wildly.  She grabs his wrist and twists, hard.  He cries out.   

“Give me the boy,” she growls at him, glad she has one of his arms in her hands.   _He can’t throw him now._ But he could drop him, and he tries.  Arya releases his arm and catches Robert, ignoring the way her shoulder stings at the sudden weight of the boy.  The brigand leaps from Froglegs’ back now, and is running away from Arya as fast as he can.  Arya shifts Robert to her right arm, finds the dagger at her hip, unsheathes it and throws. 

It catches him in the leg and he falls to the ground with a cry.  She sets Robert down by a tree, and sprints to the man, who has dug her knife out of her leg and is crawling away from her, knife in hand. 

“Don’t come near me!” he screams at her.  “I’ll gut you if you do.” 

“Harder men have tried,” Arya says, standing on his ankle.  She’s got the scars on her stomach to prove it.  He yells, and slashes wildly at Arya.  He misses, and she grabs his wrist again, twisting it.  “That’s mine,” she says, pulling her knife from his hand.  She knees the wound and he screams again, and she holds the knife to his throat.   

“You said you’d be merciful!” It’s somewhere between a betrayed growl and a sob of fear.   

“If you stopped,” Arya says.  “You didn’t.” 

Behind her, she hears hooves.  “Who’s that?” she calls, praying that it’s not another brigand.  She’s not sure she could handle two of them at once with a knife and her shoulder the way it is, even if this one’s wounded.   

“Arya!”  

She almost sags in relief.  It’s Gendry. 

“Robert’s by the tree,” she calls, not looking away from the brigand.  She turns her attention back to him.  “Any final words?” 

She asks. 

“Mercy!” he sputters.  “Have mercy, Lady.” 

“Why?” she demands.  “Why should I be merciful?  I’m not without mercy, but why do you deserve it?” 

“I’ve a family!” he says.  “A little boy and a little girl and a wife.” 

“You should have thought of that before you resorted to stealing babes from their mothers’ arms.” 

He swallows against her knife.  “Mercy,” he repeats.  “For my boy and girl.” 

“They’ll have it.  Any northerner in need is welcome in the halls of Winterfell.  What’s your name?”   

“My name?” 

“Your name.” 

“Jon.” She wishes it had been any other name.  “Jon Wooler.” 

She takes a deep breath, and calls to Gendry, “I need your sword.” 

“Are you sure?  I can do it,” he says. 

“He shall have my king’s justice, and I am the one who will give it.  I’ve heard his words.” 

She stands, and there are tears on the man’s—on Jon’s face, and takes Gendry’s sword from him. 

“I,” she begins, her voice shaking, “Arya of the House Stark, in the name of King Brandon of House Stark, on this day condemn you to die.  I have heard your words, and your family will know no undue retribution for your crimes.  My mercy to you is a clean death, and a swift one.”  She looks at him.  “Stay still.  You’ll make it worse for yourself if you move and the cut isn’t clean.” 

He’s sobbing and shaking now, and Gendry passes her and flips him onto his stomach, pinning his hands to his back. 

Arya swings the sword, and her shoulder screams, but the stroke is clean, and the smell of blood fills the clearing.   

She hands the sword back to Gendry, and turns away from Jon Wooler’s body.  “We leave it for the wolves,” she tells him as she walks back to the tree where little Robert is now no longer crying.  He is hiding his face in his hands, and she crouches down next to him and strokes his cheek.  “You’re safe now, princeling,” she tells him. 

But as they ride back to the road, Robert in Gendry’s arms, her shoulder aching, she can’t quite get the scent of Jon Wooler’s blood out of her nose.

* * *

The only good thing to come of the fiasco in the woods is that the king and queen are too shaken to wish to leave Winterfell by the end of the week.  Robert is safe and well, but Devan has a cut on his arm and Shireen finds it hard to eat. 

There is no big dinner in the main hall as there had been in the weeks before, and Gendry eats with his queen and king in a solar, along with Edric and Elaena the nursemaid.  No one speaks, and they eat quickly before all retiring to their corners.  “Ser Gendry,” Edric calls to him as he leaves. 

Gendry pauses and turns around.  “You fought bravely today,” Edric tells him.  “You do honor to your cloak.” 

“Thank you, brother,” he responds.  

Edric is watching him carefully.  “The queen is lucky to have you in her service.”  On any other day, Gendry would have relished to hear those words, but not today.  Today, all he could think of was how pale Arya had looked after she’d cut off the brigand’s head and left his corpse for the wolves. 

“Gendry,” Edric says.  “I hope I don’t have to remind you of your vows.”  Is his face so readable, even to Edric now?  Aelgenth had once told him that he was an open book, but Gendry was illiterate and so he’d never bothered to care about the statement. 

“No more than you already have, brother.” 

His thrice damned, thrice bleeding vows.  Would that he’d never become a knight, sometimes.   

He finds Arya in her bedchamber, curled on her right side, eyes closed.   

He sits down next to her, and her eyes flicker open.  They are dull.  Gendry bends down to kiss her cheek. 

“I can’t get the smell of his blood out of my nose,” she whispers.  “It’s like when…” she swallows.  “It’s like when mother…” 

“It’s not like that,” Gendry tells her. 

“It is,” she whispers.  “His name was Jon.  I killed him and his name was Jon.  I killed my mother and—” 

“He was not Jon Snow.” 

Arya squeezes her eyes closed.  “I killed her, Gendry.” 

“I know.  I was there.” 

“I pretend I didn’t.  I do everything to distract myself from the fact that I did, just like Sansa suggested, but then it still hits me and it hurts worse than anything.  I can’t get the smell of blood out of my nose.” 

Gendry lies down next to her and takes her in his arms. 

“Wolf child,” she mumbles, “blood child.  Dark heart.”   

“You are not a dark heart,” he says.  “He deserved to die.  What would have happened to Robert if you hadn’t gone after him?  Shireen’s only child, named for your father’s dearest friend.”   

“I know,” Arya says.  “I know.  I just can’t get the smell of blood out of my nose.” 

Gendry squeezes her, and kisses the top of her head.  “You will,” he tells her.  “It will fade.” 

“It won’t,” Arya says.  “It’ll come back to hurt me another day.” 

“And you’ll defeat it.” 

“I killed my mother, Gendry.” 

“She was already dead, Arya.” 

But Arya’s shaking her head.  She doesn’t say another word.  She buries her head against his chest, and breathes.

* * *

Arya awakens before Gendry does the next morning.  In truth, she’d barely slept.  It was more giving up on pretending to sleep than anything else.  She sits up and finds the sling for her shoulder and goes to throw some water on her face.  She looks back at Gendry.  He’s now sprawled face down on the bed, and Arya bites her lip.  Jon Wooler had been face down when she’d cut his head off yesterday. 

The taste of blood is gone, thank the gods, but the memories aren’t.  Jon Wooler begging for mercy, her mother’s pale blue eyes and rotten flesh, Jon calling out to her as he died, the sigh of the crowd as they’d cut off her father’s head… 

 _Death is a part of life,_ she reminds herself.  She’d learned that young.  And life is too much to live beholden to death.  It was why she’d never been a good servant of him of many faces.   _Women bring life into the world.  We bring the gift of death.  No one can do both._  

Arya freezes, her eyes going wide.  She stares at Gendry, stares at him lying there on the bed.  There is a bruise on his back from the melee the week before which is yellow and doesn’t hurt him anymore and… 

“No,”she whispers and hurries to the chest at the base of the bed, tugging out a tunic and a set of trousers, ignoring her shoulder that complains as she dresses herself.   _No.  No_ _no no._  

She leaves the room at top speed, hurrying through the keep.  It’s still so early that only some servants are awake, and those that are nod to her with tired expressions.  She crosses the baily to the rookery, her head spinning.   _He’s been here a month, and I’ve not bled.  I’ve not…and I never don’t…_  

The dizziness, the scent of blood not leaving her nose…what else?  She’d been tired.  She’d been very tired, and Sansa had said she’d been so tired since she’d been with child.  But sometimes you could just be tired, when there was lots going on.  But she was never dizzy—and certainly not dizzy enough to fall off a horse.  

She climbs the steps up to the room below the rookery and knocks on the door, and waits. 

“One moment,” she hears Maester Donnel say from inside, and Arya waits, fiddling with the hem of her tunic.   

“Princess,” he says, bowing as he opens the door.  “What can I be of service with?  Is your shoulder well?” 

“I think I’m pregnant,” she blurts out.  He blinks, and steps aside, and she goes into his room and sits down in a chair and rests her fists on her knees. 

“When did you last bleed?” he asks her gently as he goes to the fireplace and begins stoking the flames.   

“It’s been at least a month.  Not since before Queen Shireen’s party came north.” 

“And I take it that you have been engaging in the activities that would beget a child since then?” he asks. 

Arya looks at him, and he gives her a faint smile before turning and putting a kettle over the fire.  He sits down across from her and crosses his legs.   

“Well, I take it you aren’t one to miss your flowering frequently.  I’ve never had you here on this subject before.” 

“I’ve never once missed one.  Not since I first flowered.”  Gods, it had been the day after she’d killed her mother too.  Gendry had been there.  Had he known?  She’d never asked him. 

Maester Donnel is nodding.  “Have you felt ill at all?  Vomiting in the morning is not an uncommon occurrence for young women when they first become pregnant.” 

Arya shakes her head.  “I’ve felt tired.  And dizzy.” 

“Tenderness in your breasts?” 

She scrunches her forehead.  “Not that I’ve…” she’d thought it was just needing Gendry, the way her breasts had felt so alive to his touch.  But maybe now it was this. 

“Well,” the maester says, leaning forward, looking uncomfortable, “I—ah—should ask.  You’re not wed, and I know you’ve no intent to wed.  There are teas of course, which would—ah—” 

But Arya’s shaking her head.  “I don’t want moon tea,” she tells him.  It’s Gendry’s child inside her.  It’s hers and Gendry’s.   _And he’s leaving._  

He can’t leave now—not now.  Surely this will make it different. 

 _He swore vows._  

 _But it’s his child.  He hated being a fatherless bastard, he wouldn’t do that to my…to our…_  

“In that case,” Maester Donnel, “You and I should begin discussing how best to take care of your body while you are with child, princess.” 

Arya leaves the maester’s cell an hour later, moving slowly.  It’s like she’s in a dream.  There are more people now, and she sees Steffon Seaworth and Rickon sparring in the yard, she sees Meera speaking with the master of horse about Froglegs, who’d been limping since she’d been ridden through the woods the day before, she sees Sansa and Ned walking along the parapets of the castle, arm in arm, but she doesn’t really see any of them.  It’s a bright day, so unlike the one when they’d all arrived, when she and Gendry had bedded down in the mud and rain.  He’d barely been there an hour before she’d taken him inside her, and now here she was with his child… 

She’d never thought to have a child.  Not ever.  She wasn’t supposed to marry.  She wasn’t the lady, like Sansa.  She was Arya Stark, Bran’s arm and justice.  She wasn’t someone’s wife, her womb was not to be bought and sold like horseflesh.   

But she’d given herself to him.  And though she’d thought they were careful, though he’d pulled himself from her every time… 

 _It has to be a mistake,_ she thinks as she climbs the stairs again. 

 _It has to be._  

Except she’s sure it isn’t.  She’s sure.  Her breasts feel heavy, her body feels heavy, and her stomach, she’s sure, is full of life.   

 _It wasn’t as though King Robert had any_ _trouble planting_ _bastards wherever he went.  Why would Gendry have any less trouble?_  

She pushes open the door to her bedchamber.  Gendry’s still in bed, but he’s not asleep.  He’s lying, staring at the ceiling, his brow creased. 

“Morning,” he says as she closes the door and bars it. 

“Good morning.” 

“What’s wrong?” 

Had it been so obvious in the tone of her voice?  It must have been.  He sits up.  They’d both fallen asleep half-dressed the night before, and he’s still in his breeches.  Better than if he were undressed.  That would have been unbearable. 

“Gendry,” she says quietly, and her voice sounds so hollow even to her own ears.  “Gendry, I’m pregnant.” 

Silence stretches between them, and she watches him closely.  His face is blank, blank as though he’d not heard her correctly.  “Pregnant?” 

“Yes.” 

“With a child.” 

“No, with a fish.” 

“With my child.” 

“Who else’s, stupid?” 

He puts his head in his hands, his fingers knotting in his dark hair, pulling it away from his skull before he lets go, and looks back at her.  “We were so careful, though,” he breathes. 

“Not careful enough, it would seem.” 

“You’re sure?” 

“As sure as I can be.” 

He doesn’t look happy, he doesn’t look…he doesn’t look anything at all, and Arya’s heart sinks. 

She waits.  She waits, because she doesn’t know if she can bear to ask the question on her lips, and she knows that Gendry will say it.  He’ll say it, won’t he? 

“Bloody hell,” he mutters and he gets out of bed.  “Bloody fucking hell.” 

She walks towards him, but he’s already gathering his white cloak from the chair he’d thrown it on the night before, and he brushes past her almost without a word. 

“Gendry,” she says, and he freezes. 

“What?” he growls at her. 

“Don’t you have anything to say?” 

“What do you want me to say?” 

“ _Anything_ , Gendry.” 

He turns and looks at her.  “I swore vows,” he says, breathing heavily.  “And I’ve broken them.  I know that.  I know I’m weak.  But at least there was an end in sight for that.  But I’m not supposed to have any children.” 

It’s as if he’s slapped her.  She’s always known he can be a stubborn, rude, bullheaded man, but this is unlike anything. 

“You’re angry with me?” she demands. 

“No,” he says, but his voice belies his words.  “No, I’m angry with myself, Arya.  I’m angry that this is how it ends, with…with…” 

“It doesn’t have to end,” she says, stepping forward.  “It doesn’t have to.  This doesn’t have to be it.” 

“I’ve soiled my vows.  You’d have me break my oaths as well?” 

“You already have,” she points out. 

But Gendry’s shaking his head.  “I can’t, Arya.  I just can’t.” 

“Why not?” 

“Because.” 

“Because why?” 

“Because that’s not who I am.  I’m a knight of the kingsguard, I can’t just abandon my queen because I’ve gotten some…gotten you…put some other  _bastard_  into the world.”   

And there it is.  With one word, spoken through gritted teeth, she knows, knows he’s leaving, knows there’s nothing she can do to convince him to stay, and Arya’s heart goes cold. 

“Fine, then,” she tells him.  “Fine.  If you want your legacy to be that of your father’s—that you don’t care enough about your  _bastards_  to ever show them your face.  I shall love him enough for both of us.”  He recoils, and Arya feels bitter pleasure in that.  She wants to scream.  She wants to shake him.  She wants to weep.  And if she wants those things, the least that she can do is make sure Gendry feels the same.  “Get out of my room,” she hisses at him. 

He turns away without a word and unbars the door, and Arya shouts after him, “He’ll be stronger than you ever were, and braver, and kinder. Like Jon.” 

Gendry slams the door and the sound of it echoes through the room, and Arya sinks onto the bed.  With a few great gulps, she begins to cry. 


	6. Chapter 6

Gendry doesn’t come back to her room, and she’s glad of that. She lies in bed for the rest of the morning, breathing shakily, and trying not to remember that only the night before, he’d held her as she’d remembered her mother. _Not that any of it matters now._

She rests a hand on her stomach. It’s still flat—no sign of the life that now grows within it, though one day, she knows, she’ll be as swollen as Sansa.

The day goes by in a blur. She listens in on Bran’s and Shireen’s discussion of the White Harbor tariffs, she advises Rickon on his plans to show Steffon the North, and she refuses to look around in case she catches a glimpse of a white cloak. She eats only a little, and doesn’t join the court for dinner, dining alone in her room instead.

She wishes Nymeria were alive. What perfection it would be to close her eyes and run until she woke. She could find a cat, or a dog, or another wolf of some sort, but she wants Nymeria, that wolf that was a part of her. She wants Jon, who would ruffle her hair and call her little sister. _I promise he’ll be loved,_ she vows to Jon’s ghost. _He’ll want for nothing, and will only know love and happiness in Winterfell. He won’t feel an outsider. He won’t…he won’t…_

She imagines a little boy with her long face and Gendry’s blue eyes asking her where his father is.

 _I killed him,_ she half-imagines herself saying, but instead she turns and presses her face into her pillow and screams into it until her throat is sore. _He’s leaving again. He’s not pack, he wasn’t then, he isn’t now, even if his son’s inside me._

She should never have bedded him, never. This is far worse than Larence or Olyvar. She should have been like Nymeria, throwing off any lesser beast that tried to mount her.

 _He’s not lesser than me. He’s Gendry._ She’d felt…she’d felt…

There’s a quiet knock on the door, and it swings open. In the half-light of the evening, Arya squints to see Sansa standing in the door.

“You’re already abed?” Sansa asks. She sounds disapproving, and Arya—

Arya’s tired of it. “Sansa,” she tells her sister, “If you are going to berate me, now is not the time. If there was ever a time for you to shed whatever the south did to you and be my sister again, now would be it, because I don’t need you telling me that I’m doing something wrong again, I need my sister.”

She expects Sansa to let out a huff and turn on her heel and close the door and leave her be. That’s what Sansa would have done when they were girls, and Sansa has been more like her girlhood self than anything else of late. She does not expect Sansa to step into the room, shutting the door behind her, and come and sit on Arya’s bed, running her hand along Arya’s arm.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, but Arya doesn’t answer. Arya’s staring at her.

“Where have you been?” she demands angrily.

Sansa blinks at her. “Where have I—?”

“Been. Yes. You went south and came back all…”

Sansa flushes and looks down at her hand. “I didn’t mean to,” she says quietly.

“And yet,” Arya mutters. Sansa gives her a look, and Arya half expects her to snap at her. Instead, she continues to rub her hand on Arya’s arm.

“In the five years since I’ve been married to Ned, I’ve been pregnant five times,” she tells Arya. “This is the first time that I’ve carried a babe long enough that it shows and…and…” She looks at Arya, and Arya sees fear in her sister’s eyes. “You never knew our cousin Robert. You never met him. He was sickly, and he was Aunt Lysa’s only living child and…and what if…what if I’m like Aunt Lysa? What if the gods cursed my womb for what happened to him? What if I can’t have a child? Or my children die? And Ned—he keeps telling me there will be others, but what if there aren’t?”

Arya sits up, and takes her sister’s hand, and Sansa does not pull it away. “I didn’t know,” she breathes.

“That’s why I didn’t tell you and Bran that I was pregnant when I came north. That’s why I’ve been so…I’m…I’m frightened, all right? And I’m sorry. I’m sorry—I know. I—I’m sorry.”

Arya wraps her arms around her sister. Now that she sees that Sansa won’t shove her away, it’s all she wants, to hug her sister. Sansa rests her head on Arya’s shoulder, breathing hard. Then, in that remarkably Sansa way, she takes a deep breath, and says, “I’m supposed to be comforting you. What’s wrong? Did Gendry do something foolish?”

And Arya’s crying again. She doesn’t want to be crying, not in front of Sansa, but this is the kindest that Sansa has been to her since she went south to marry Ned, and it’s what Arya wants, what she’s always wanted, her sister to love her, to want to protect her. “I’m pregnant,” she says, and Sansa stiffens next to her. “I’m pregnant, and he’s leaving anyway.”

There. She said it aloud. There was no going back. She is pregnant, and Gendry won’t be there with her. He won’t ever see his son smile, or tell him stories, or…or…

“You know,” Sansa says quietly, “I’ve never known Ser Gendry very well. I never thought he much cared for my company in truth, but I regarded him well enough since he was your friend, and one of King Robert’s sons. But I’m not sure I can regard him well anymore.”

Arya’s jaw drops. From Sansa, it is as if she were raging and cursing, as if this were some great condemnation. “I don’t know what to say,” Arya says.

“You don’t have to say anything. I’m simply stating my thoughts,” Sansa says. She takes Arya’s hand again. “Though…I’m sorry your child will be a bastard.”

Arya’s sure that Sansa means well, but the words sting. “I’ll love him regardless.”

“Of course you will,” Sansa says at once. “I didn’t mean to imply that you wouldn’t. Merely…merely that it will be hard for him in the world. Though I suppose Bran might decide to legitimize him if…” her voice trails away.

 _She knows about Rickon,_ Arya thought at once. But Sansa was too tactful to say it, just as she was too tactful to make any comment on Bran’s childlessness. _I’d not thought of that._

Her heart aches suddenly. She wants Gendry to be there with her, wants him to lie there, to hear what Sansa had just suggested, to watch as he realizes that he, the bastard son of a king may be father to a different king’s heir…

Tears leak out of Arya’s eyes again. “I didn’t mean to make you sad,” Sansa says at once.

“It’s not you,” Arya sighs. “I…I just want him gone already. I can’t think of him without feeling horrible.”

Sansa kisses her cheek. “I know,” she whispers.

They sit quietly for a time, and the room grows even darker around them. It’s the darkness that makes Arya say it. “When your son is born, and mine, you should visit again. Without the court. I want them to be friends.”

“I want that too,” Sansa says at once. “I’ll breathe more easily when he’s been born. I think…I think mother gave me false hope. She had five children, all hale and healthy, and I never dreamed I wouldn’t. But here’s my fifth,” she rests a hand on her stomach.

“He’ll be strong. He’s a fighter. I can tell,” Arya tells her sister. She catches the shade of a smile on Sansa’s face through the darkness. Then the smile grows wider.

“What?” Arya asks.

“I just…I had a stupid thought. But I think you’ll like it.”

“What is it?”

“I just…I had this vision of you, very pregnant and wielding Oathkeeper to carry out Bran’s justice.” Arya’s mind was suddenly full of Jon Wooler again, and her stomach twists. “I…I liked it as an image. There was something…powerful in it. In you, like some merciful mother.” Arya closes her eyes. _They called her Mother Merciless…_

“I like it,” Arya says, and she’s pleased that her voice doesn’t sound hollow. She focuses on Sansa’s words, on carrying out Bran’s justice, on making sure that Winterfell is never weak, and that House Stark lives on, and teaching her son what she learned at her father’s table. “I like it.”

* * *

She does not look at Gendry at all when they bid the queen’s party farewell. She kisses Shireen on the cheek, and kisses little Prince Robert on the forehead, and gives Devan a hug that is probably unseemly, but she doesn’t care. She hugs Sansa and Ned, and watches as her sister wipes a single tear from her eye as she leaves Winterfell again, and waves until the party has passed through the gates before turning to go back inside the keep.

“Arya,” Bran calls to her and she pauses. “I’m going to the godswood. Come with me?”

So she does. She walks alongside Tom and Marvyn as they bring Bran’s chair into the godswood and settle him in front of the great heart tree. He closes his eyes for just a moment.

“Sansa told me you’re pregnant,” he says.

And just like that, Arya feels a twinge of annoyance at her sister. “I was going to tell you,” she complains. “Sansa didn’t have to.”

“I think Sansa worried you wouldn’t tell me soon enough,” Bran says. His voice isn’t unkind. He holds out his hand, and Arya takes it. “I wanted to make sure you knew—your child will be precious, and I cannot wait to know her.”

Arya grimaces. She’d thought of her child as a boy, and Sansa had called it a he as well. But Bran called it a girl. Did he know something, somehow? “Do you know it’s a…”

Bran shakes his head. “No. I don’t have that foreknowledge. I just like the idea of a little girl like you running about this place.”

Arya swallows, her throat suddenly very thick.

Bran levels the full force of his blue gaze at her. _Mother’s eyes._ They always looked more like mother’s eyes in Bran than they did in Sansa or Rickon for some reason. “Are you all right?” he asks her.

“I’m fine,” she says at once. Bran sighs.

“You know,” he says, “When I said I was worried about you, it wasn’t because of Larence.”

“Gendry hasn’t broken my heart,” Arya insists, but Bran just shakes his head.

“You hate being left behind,” he tells her. “You hated when Olyvar left, and you _hated_ when Gendry left the first time around. And now he’s gone and left you, and your child again. You hate it when they go.”

Arya chews her lip. She can’t even begin to deny it.

“Just remember,” Bran says, “We will always be here with you. Me and Meera, and even if they’re far, Rickon and Sansa as well. We love you. We’re your pack. We’re her pack,” he adds, pointing to Arya’s stomach.

“I know,” Arya whispers.

“Good,” Bran replies. He leans forward and kisses the top of her head. He looks at the tree, and cocks his head, closing his eyes for just a moment. When he opens them again, they are thoughtful and there’s a smile playing at his lips.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Arya asks grumpily.

“I’ve learned my lesson about meddling in futures. I don’t want to spoil this one.”

“If you weren’t a king, I’d…” Arya begins to whine, but she lets her voice trail away. She leans against Bran, and listens to the wind rustling through the leaves. She’d told Shireen once that it is her job to question Bran, but right now…right now she wants to have faith in him. Faith in Bran is the only thing that is keeping her heart and mind from descending into chaos.

* * *

The ride from Winterfell is slow, and Gendry doesn’t look over his shoulder even once. He wants to kick his horse into a gallop and ride south as fast as possible, but that is not Shireen’s plan. She wants to ride slowly, and so slowly they shall ride.

Gendry’s always tried to be steady, and grounded. He’s always tried to be solid. It is what has made his…what made his friendship with Aelgenth as stable as it has been.   He is the solid one, and she is flame, flickering and dancing. It was what had been…but no. No, he is not letting himself think of Arya, and how her soft silver eyes went to ice and she threw him from his room. He’d thought to compare the two of them once, Aelgenth and Arya. But Aelgenth is fire and Arya is water, and if Gendry had once thought that was a good thing, a safe thing, he forgot that you could drown in water quite as easily as fire could eat away your flesh.

“ _If you want your legacy to be that of your father’s…_ ” Arya of all people knew how that would hurt him. Arya, of all people, would wield that like a sword against him when he hurt her. _What did I expect? That she would say nothing?_

He shifts in his saddle and pulls his cloak around him a little more tightly. It is a chilly day, for summer, and if he could look at that grey velvet doublet without feeling ill, he’d be wearing it now, for it is easily the warmest piece of clothing he has with him, but he only has his white cloak, and even that doesn’t seem to be warm enough to keep the chill off his back. _On my back, a bitter cold wind coming from the north. Is she sending it at me?_

Now he is wallowing. He knows that. He knows it because he can see Aelgenth’s face. Not her face as she is now, stately and guarded, but the face he’d known when he’d first met her, before he’d sworn his sword and life to Shireen, the face that had shared his bed, and poked him gently in the stomach whenever he whined. “ _Whining is unbecoming of a knight,_ ” she’d told him. “ _And you, ser knight, are the only one in charge of your own destiny. Stop complaining and do something about it._ ” He’d kissed her, and she’d laughed and grabbed his cock, and he’d been inside her again in moments.

He tries to focus on Aelgenth, to remember how sweet her laughter is, to remember how fond he is of her, and how much he has missed her, and how glad he shall be to see her again when they are returned to court. But her face keeps fading into Arya. They look too much alike. Both dark haired, and long faced, and Arya not screaming at him, but hissing, growling like a wolf as he—

“Did you just groan?”

Gendry stiffens and looks sideways at the king. Devan’s eyes are kind, but curious, and Gendry doesn’t want to answer. “ _That is how a coward gets away with his actions,_ ” he remembers Thoros telling him when he’d been a boy. A boy, and angry and missing Arya. Why must he always miss Arya?

“I did, your grace,” Gendry says through gritted teeth.

“Ah. Thought so.” Devan clearly doesn’t seem able to tell whether or not he should press the next question on his mind, and Gendry so wishes he wouldn’t that he forces himself to say, “I…I have left things poorly in Winterfell.”

“Ah,” the king replies. “Well…that happens, sometimes. Or so I’ve heard.”

“Indeed, your grace.”

Except it shouldn’t. Not now. Not ever. God, but it shouldn’t. Was that how men had spoken to his father? Was that how his father had spoken of his bastards? “ _I left things poorly,”_ and “ _Well…that happens, sometimes”_? Gendry feels ill.

 _She’s carrying my child,_ he thinks. _She’s…she’s…I’ve…_

He tries to remember his mother, but he can’t. He can remember her yelling at him, and he can remember her drunkenly crying. He remembers her giving him to Tobho Mott, and remembers that he’d been relieved, because maybe if he was gone, his mother wouldn’t be so angry all the time. That thought had been the first thing that had made him angry—truly angry. That him being gone was better for his mother. _Arya won’t be like her,_ he thinks. It was one of the things he’d loved about her since they were children. _Arya was always glad of me, and she said she’d love our child._

But what if he looked as much like Gendry as Gendry had like King Robert? What then? What if he was a walking reminder of how Gendry had left, the way that Arya had once speculated that Jon’s walking around constantly reminded her father of his dead sister?

 _She’ll love him,_ Gendry thinks. _She always makes good on a promise._

 _So you don’t have to worry._ He hates his traitorous mind. It had betrayed him the moment he’d come north, the moment she’d taken him inside her, the moment they’d kissed, the moment they’d _seen_ one another for the first time in years. His mind, which had wanted nothing more than exactly what he had achieved—respect, power, family—now wanted nothing more or less than Arya Stark, even though he’d bound himself in such a way that he could never have her.

And now, it had the gall to remind him of that pain at every passing moment, every step they took away from Winterfell.

“ _Time heals most ills_ ,” Aelgenth had told him. “ _And, of course, new things come along and make those ills seem insignificant._ ”

How he misses her. How he longs to hear her council. How that would never replace seeing his and Arya’s child, and holding him in his arms.

When night falls, they stop along the road to make camp, and Gendry busies himself with making sure that the king and queen are well situated. He dines with them, but every moment that Shireen plays with little baby Robert, the more ill he feels. _My cousin,_ he reminds himself. _Not my son._ But when Robert reaches for him with a hand covered in food, and grabs hold of his white cloak, Gendry stares at the tiny handprint there.

“No, Robert,” Shireen chides. “You mustn’t soil Gendry’s white cloak. He is a knight of the kingsguard, not your nursemaid.”

Robert wriggles in his seat, and giggles, and Shireen rolls her eyes and kisses his forehead.

“I have another,” Gendry says belatedly, and Shireen smiles at him. “This will wash out…” The mud from his first day in Winterfell had, after all.

He gets to his feet, removing the cloak and he leaves the tent to find his other one. The sky is a light purple and blue, and there are birds chirping their nightsongs overhead. Gendry passes some men, passes campfires and people talking about the north, and how they can’t wait to be in the south again.

“Look! A falling star,” he hears someone say, and turns around to see it.

“A good omen, I think. A falling Star of Dayne over the moors of Winterfell, don’t you, my love?” It would be Sansa Stark and Ned Dayne. They’re sitting there, Sansa leaning against her husband, his hand resting on the swell of her pregnant belly.

“It must be,” she replies, and tilts her head up. He kisses her sweetly. “A good omen for our boy.”

Dayne murmurs something in her ear that Gendry can’t hear, and Sansa takes a deep breath. “Something Arya said, is all.” Gendry’s heart quickens.

“Oh?”

“I…I want to believe it more than I actually do.”

“What did she say?”

“She said our sons would be friends, and they would play together.”

“Of course they will,” Ned says, kissing the side of her head. “I’ve been telling you that.”

“Yes, but it’s different coming from Arya. It’s always different coming from Arya. And she’ll have need of it more now, I think.”

Gendry wonders if they _have_ noticed him. Sansa Stark is hardly an artless person, but there is a coolness to her voice he does not know how to feel about.

“She’ll have the court’s support,” Ned says gently. “You mustn’t worry for her.”

“I shall endeavor,” Sansa says. She looks up at him. “I don’t like that I pity her. I have you, and she hasn’t—”

Gendry turns away, feeling hot and cold and angry and sad. Arya doesn’t need Sansa’s pity. Arya _hates_ Sansa’s pity—or at least she had when they’d been girls. He remembers Arya shrieking in fury at her sister, demanding to know _why_ she should be pitied, as if her fighting for survival wasn’t the more important thing to recognize.

But that wasn’t it. Not entirely. Not entirely. It had been Ned Dayne’s hand resting lazily on Sansa’s stomach, the gentle loving tone he’d taken when he’d spoken with her, the way they looked for omens in the sky together.

 _Lord of Light protect me,_ he thinks as he turns back to the Queen’s tent.

“Your Grace, I’d have a word, if I may,” Gendry says upon entering before even noting who is in the tent with her. He curses. The king is there, but so too is Edric Storm.

_Well, he’d find out at some point, I suppose._

“What is it, Ser Gendry?” Shireen asks. She is seated, and her babe is on her lap. He glances at Devan, and thinks he sees a flicker of approval in his eyes.

It is enough.

“Your Grace, I broke my vows in Winterfell.”

“Yes, I think everyone knew that,” she says dryly. “It was a hard thing to miss.”

He doesn’t let himself look at Edric. “I left Arya Stark with my child.”

That surprises Shireen. Her mouth is open, and her blue eyes are wide.

Gendry’s throat is dry, and he’s trying to think of what to say next, but Edric Storm finds words first. “Gods damn it all, Gendry. I told you to be discreet.”

Gendry does not look at him. He keeps his eyes on Shireen. Now that her surprise has faded, she is thinking, and Shireen has always been quick of wit. “Well,” she says. “I see that it wasn’t my little Robert who soiled your white cloak this evening. You did that all by yourself.”

“I did, your grace.”

“Are you begging my forgiveness, Gendry? I’m not sure I can forgive this. I demanded unwavering loyalty from you when you swore your oath, and a child makes the matter different—as if taking a lover wasn’t enough. I turned a blind eye to Aelgenth but this is another matter.” Her words sound hard, but her voice isn’t hard at all. If anything, it sounds like she’s probing him, and Gendry feels a rush, suddenly. _She is not angry with me. She knows that I’ve already done it, and that ending my service to her would only be a natural thing to follow._

“Your grace, I swore my life to you, and you know I would die for you.”

“I do,” Shireen says. “But a son is a different matter.” She rubs her thumb along Robert’s hand.

“I understand, your grace.”

“I’ll have your white cloak back, I think, Ser Gendry. I shall bestow it upon a man more worthy.”

He hands it to her, and it is little Robert who grabs at it and starts chewing. Shireen rolls her eyes. “I suppose one can’t get angry with a baby for ruining the dignity of a scene,” she sighs.

“I think I did that myself, your grace,” Gendry says. He’s trying not to shake. His heart is beating so quickly.

Shireen looks at him, and she smiles. “I suppose if I had to throw you from my service, this is the best way to do it,” she sighs. “I shall miss you, Gendry.”

“And I you, your grace.” It’s like this is a dream. Some magical dream. _Why didn’t I do this while we were still in Winterfell? Why did it take leaving her behind to make me see? You stupid,_ stupid _bastard._

He’d answer that question later. Later, when he was in Arya’s arms. If she took him back. He didn’t like that thought, much as he deserved it.

“You may go.”

He bows, and turns to leave the tent, but the king says, “Wait.”

Gendry looks over his shoulder. “Take this. You’ll catch a chill riding by night, and I don’t think Lady Stark would thank us for that.” He hands Gendry a plain woolen cloak of undyed grey.

“Thank you, Your Grace.”

He leaves, and goes off to find his horse. His heart is racing. He doesn’t have anything that he needs—his whites, his armor, his everything belongs to the queen. Water is his own—he’d bought him after winning a melee’s purse three years before, and his sword as well. But the rest…he’ll leave Edric Storm to deal with.

“Ser Gendry.” He turns and sees Edric standing there.

“You’re disappointed, brother?” Gendry says as he places his saddle on Water’s back.

“Not surprised. But yes, a little disappointed. I had hoped… Well it does not matter now.”

No. It didn’t. Nothing did. Nothing at all. Just him and Arya and riding north again.

“Would you believe me if I said I’d miss you as well?” Edric asks him, and Gendry looks at him.

Sometimes he forgets that Edric is younger than him, but not now. He looks…well…like Gendry’s younger brother. Gendry sighs. “Yes, I do. And I shall miss you as well,” he tells him. Edric nods, and steels himself.

“I’m sure our paths will cross again. I may be…harsh. Harsh at your departure. But I shall miss you.”

Gendry tightens the saddle and throws the plain grey cloak over his shoulders. “Be as harsh as you like. I can’t care.” Then he pauses, and his guilt comes back. “Tell…tell Aelgenth I’m sorry, but that…that it had to be this way. She should know the truth of it.”

“She wasn’t your lover, I thought.” Edric’s tone is accusatory, and Gendry mounts Water.

“She’s not. But she is my friend and she deserves to know the truth.”

“I’ll see it done.”

“Thank you.”

“Farewell, brother.”

“Farewell.”

And Gendry rides off into the night.

* * *

Arya awakens to a knock on her door. “My lady, a rider is approaching from the south, making great haste.”

“How long?” she calls through the door.

“At his current pace, he’ll be here in ten minutes.”

“I hope nothing happened to Shireen’s party,” she mumbles to herself.

Arya stretches in bed and refuses to look at the side that Gendry had slept on as she sits up and dresses herself. She puts on a dress today. She’s found that dresses are easier with her shoulder—or at least her dresses are. Her dresses are simple, hardly the elaborate garments that Sansa had worn during her stay. She shrugs into it, and quickly braids her hair.

The castle is still asleep—it’s early, and she’s visited by the memory of the day—had it only been a week before?—when she’d realized she was pregnant. _At least today will be normal,_ she tells herself. Now that Shireen’s party is gone, things will be normal again. Rickon and Steffon will ride out at the end of the week, and she’s quite sure she heard the two of them in Rickon’s room the night before. It had been a bittersweet moment. She was glad that Rickon was happy, but dreaded the day when Steffon, like Gendry, would ride south and leave her brother in the Starkfort.

She reaches the lichyard at the same moment that the rider from the south in a plain grey cloak is dismounting from his horse, and when he turns Arya’s heart stops.

It’s Gendry, breathless, bright-eyed Gendry, and he’s not in white, and he’s _here_ , and even as he hands the reins to his horse to a stableboy she finds herself walking towards him as though she is in a dream.

He hurries towards her, closing the distance between them, reaching out a hand as if to grab her head and kiss her, that more than anything makes her remember and she slaps him, hard, across the face. He stumbles back, hand on his cheek, but he doesn’t look surprised. He doesn’t look angry. If anything, he looks glad.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” she demands.

“I was wrong.”

“Yes—you were wrong,” she snaps. “You were going to leave me, to leave _him_.”

“I know,” Gendry says. Some of the guards are looking at them, curiously. Gendry casts a glance their way. “Can we talk privately?” he asks.

“No. Anything you have to say to me can be said here and now.”

“I was wrong,” Gendry repeats. Arya waits. He takes a deep breath. “From the moment I arrived in Winterfell, I should have known that I couldn’t leave you again.   Within hours of being here, my vows were long forgotten and you were the only thing that mattered.” Arya crosses her arms over her chest, waiting as he keeps thinking. “I didn’t want to be the next tale of some horrible white knight who brought shame to his cloak. And yet I did. I did no matter which way I looked at it, and yet I could not stop myself. And I told myself that if I were…if I had done it, then at least I wouldn’t do it anymore and…” His words are becoming less coherent, and Arya knows they’ve hit the heart of the matter. She continues to watch him, refuses to say a word, though his face is etched with emotion. _Let him say his piece._ He looks down at his hands, he looks around the lichyard at the watching guards and stableboys, he looks back at her, and there’s a strength she’d not expected in his gaze. “Deeds speak louder than words. Every time. I broke my vows because my vows are not who I am, and who I am around you is more who I want to be than any vow I swore. I do not wish to be my father, I wish to be who I am when I’m at your side. I regret that it took me so long to see that. To say that.

“I…I do not need you to take me back,” he adds quickly, though his eyes are wide as he says it, and she knows the prospect terrifies him. “I just…I can’t be far from you. And I don’t want to be far from him.”

Arya stares at him, taking in the way his hands are fidgeting, the way his shoulders are hunched, the way he is looking, not directly at her, but up at her, his head tilted forward so that he’s looking through his lashes. His lips are dry, his cheeks are red from the wind, and there are dark circles under his eyes. _He rode through the night._

“I will never leave you again,” he whispers. “I promise.”

“Actions speak louder than words,” she says. “I don’t want your promises. I want you here, forever. You can’t promise it. You must do it.”

“I will.”

He takes a tentative step towards her, then another. He reaches a hand out and takes one of hers, and Arya feels warmth flood through her, and she closes the distance between the two of them and wraps her arms around him, pressing her face into his neck and squeezing him as tightly as she can. Gendry rests his chin on the top of her head and holds her, the two of them swaying back and forth in the yard. She breathes in the scent of him, and with every passing moment, her body relaxes into his. He is back. He is not leaving her. He is not leaving their child.

“You rode through the night,” she whispers. “You must be tired.”

“A little. The sight of you has given me the strength to see the day through.”

She rolls her eyes. “That’s stupid. You should sleep.”

He laughs, and squeezes her and, to her complete shock, he lifts her off the ground and turns the both of them around in a circle.

“Only if you come with me,” he whispers in her ear, and a shiver goes up her spine.

“Well, I shouldn’t even be awake now. I could be convinced to go back to sleep.”

He lets her go, and she takes his hand and they go back into the keep together. His hand is on the small of her back as they climb the stairs up to her bedchamber, and when they are inside it and they’ve barred the door, his lips are on hers and his hands are groping at her arse, bunching the skirt of her dress up into his fists. Arya stands on the tips of her toes, rubbing herself against his chest, against his hips, against his already stiff cock, trapping heat between them as she presses Gendry against the door of the bedchamber. She unclasps his new grey cloak, and unfastens the buttons on his doublet, and before she can shove it off his shoulders, Gendry has tugged her dress up and she steps away from him so he can pull it up over her head and throw it away.

His eyes go dark at the sight of her, and she bends down to strip off her smallclothes and boots while Gendry tears off his doublet and shirt and unlaces his breeches, shoving them down his legs. Arya helps him pull his boots and breeches off, and kisses her way up his legs to his cock, and he moans when she takes him in her mouth, her hands gripping his thighs. She almost gags on him, he pushes so deep into her throat, but she relaxes herself and a moment later he’s in even deeper. She looks up at him, and he cups her chin, and his eyes are hooded, and his mouth is open and his hands are in her hair, and she could make him come right here, right now if she wanted.

She could, if she wanted. She has him in her mouth, and he’s looking at her like she’s the only thing to exist in the world, and gods be good, she’s missed him…She’s missed him so much it’s hurt her, she hasn’t been able to look at half her bed. She pulls his cock from her mouth, and pumps it twice, slowly, her grip loose. She rises, Gendry’s hand coming to her elbow as she does and guiding her up. She kisses him as deeply as she’s ever kissed him, her tongue sliding into his mouth, and she wonders if he can taste himself there. Her arms cross behind his neck and his hands fall to her arse again, and he picks her up. She wraps her legs around his hips as he walks her over to the bed, and Arya rocks her hips against his, feeling herself dripping onto him.

He sits down on the bed, her still straddling him, and his lips leave hers, kissing their way across her cheek, and down her neck to her breasts. Her nipples are stiff, and her breasts are tender, just as the maester had told her they would be, and Gendry’s mouth and hands on them are enough to make her groan. She ruts her slit against him, needing him inside her, but not wanting it to be over, just yet, because she knows the moment he’s inside her, it will all be over.

“I’ve heard people say that fornication is bad for unborn babes,” she teases him.

“Those idiots can go to hell,” he grumbles into her breasts, and Arya laughs and kisses the top of his head as he bites lightly at one of her nipples. She gasps, and she can feel his lips quirk up against her skin.

His cock is hard between them, and Arya reaches down to stroke it. Gendry makes a noise and pauses in kissing her, looking down at her hand between them.

“What?”

“I want to feel every inch of you,” he says. “And your arm’s in the way.”

She rolls her eyes. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Humor me,” he says.

“So you don’t even want me rubbing your cock?”

“I do, but…” he grimaces, and Arya has an idea. She lifts her hips and Gendry makes a noise of protest until he sees she’s not pushing him inside her, but rather under her, so that her slit is stretched across his shaft, and his cock slides between her legs and up the crack of her arse. She rocks her hips and he hisses. “That’s going to be unbearable fast.”

“Not my problem,” she lies, and Gendry looks at her for a moment, his eyes shining with wonder, as she rocks along his shaft. He feels perfect just there, perfect for as she rocks, there are moments where his slick shaft rubs against that nub at the top of her slit, and it goes right to her already racing heart. Gendry’s breathing hard, seeming to have quite forgotten his complaint that her arm was between them, and forgetting that he is sitting there with her breasts in his face and her hands in his hair. Or maybe he hasn’t forgotten. Maybe he hasn’t.

No, he definitely hasn’t. Quick as a cat, he drags her lips back down to his and his hand is between them now, guiding him inside her, and she stretches to fill him up. They sigh together their hips move together, her hands trailing down his back, his hands at her hips, guiding her speed. He lies down on the bed, and looks up at her, straddling him his eyes dripping from her breasts down to the moment where his black curls meet hers.

She runs her hands over his chest, through the soft dark hair that grows there, tracing lines along the muscles of his stomach until he picks up the speed underneath her and she needs to hold onto him, as he fucks up into her, harder and harder, until he’s calling out her name and she feels hot wet heat inside her, _inside her_ , for the first real time.

His cock twitches, and he hums happily, looking up at her lazily through hooded eyes. Neither of them move. Neither of them stop looking at one another. Arya feels him start to lose his stiffness inside her, but she can’t care, not just yet. He’s inside her still, and he’s here, and back and…

“You’ll marry me, won’t you?” she asks.

He sits up, his lips only inches from hers. “If you’ll have me,” he says, and he kisses her, wrapping his arms around her as he nips at her lower lip. She sighs into his mouth, and rocks her hips against his again, but he’s soft now, completely.

He gets the gesture, though, and he pulls out of her, and his seed gushes out of her as well as he shifts her onto her back, still kissing her. He kisses her lips, her nose, her forehead, her chin. He kisses her neck, her collarbone, her sternum, each nipple. He kisses each scar on her stomach, and rubs his hand along it, looking up at her again. “We’re in here,” he whispers. “Both of us.”

Arya’s heart swells as she nods, and she feels a smile breaking across her face. _We’re both here,_ she thinks.

He kisses her stomach, kisses along the trail of dark hair from her belly button to her mound, and then hitches her legs over his shoulder and slides his tongue along her slit, lapping up the moisture there like it’s some sort of nectar. He groans and looks up at her and his eyes are the only thing that matters, the perfect joy she sees there. “We taste good,” he whispers, and she moans as his tongue finds the nub at the top of her slit and he circles it.

Arya’s legs fall open, not needing his shoulders to keep them propped open that his tongue may find them. She stretches them as wide as they’ll go, offering herself up to him and the fingers that are sliding inside her, and the tongue that is dancing lightly over her skin, just enough, and not enough both at once. There are three fingers inside her, curling up and stroking the inside of her , and he takes the nub between his lips and sucks it, sucks it and flicks at it ever so lightly with his tongue and Arya cries out. It’s not enough, but it nearly is. “More,” she begs him, but he doesn’t give her more. He doesn’t move his fingers faster, he doesn’t press his tongue to her more firmly. His touch remains light, and gods it is too light. “Gendry,” she pleads. “Gendry, Gendry, _Gendry.”_ With one flick of his tongue she falls apart, her back arching, her heart racing, every vein in her body pumping furiously, reminding her how alive she is, how very alive, and how she is not alone—not at all.

He presses a closed-lipped kiss to her core then climbs up the length of the bed to lie down next to her. She rubs her face into the crook of his neck, and he cups her face to kiss her gently. They lie there together, watching as the room grows slowly brighter until their eyes droop closed and the sound of their breathing fades into sleep.

* * *

A week later, they are standing before the heart tree in the godswood. Arya is garbed in white, and Gendry is garbed in grey. He cloaks her in the simple grey cloak that Devan had given him to ride north, and Arya wraps her white bride’s cloak with its grey direwolf around his shoulders. The few who are in the godswood with them applaud, and Rickon lets out a whoop when they kiss.

When they break apart, Gendry looks down into Arya’s eyes, and they are shining so brightly they look like stars.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

**Epilogue**

“No! You can’t!”

“I can _too_! I’ve also got the wolf’s blood.”

“ _Mother!_ ”

“Resolve it between you,” Arya calls. She, Sansa, and Bran are seated beneath the heart tree in the godswood. Sansa is sewing, her second child asleep at her side, and Arya has one of Bran’s ledgers on her lap, taking careful stock of how much is being put away for winter, as Bran reads through a letter he’d received from Lord Manderly about tariffs earlier that morning for the fifth time.

Jon is scowling, and clearly doesn’t like that his cousin is trying to climb up into the treehouse his father had built for him. But Lyanna Dayne does not take no for an answer, no more than Jon does. And the pair of them have been shouting about it for five minutes.

Lyanna Dayne has strawberry blonde hair and blue eyes and Arya’s certain she’ll be a great beauty one day. “ _If she ever gets it out of her head that she should be the Sword of the Morning after her father_ ,” Sansa had complained one evening after the children had gone to bed.

“ _Don’t you dare try and remove the thought from her,”_ Arya had said fiercely and Sansa had given her a look.

“ _She’s the heir to Starfall, and her aunt is one of the most famous warriors in Westeros. I think that ship has sailed._ ”

“ _Good._ ”

But little Lyanna, used to getting her way in everything, has met her match in Jon Stark, who is furiously refusing to open the little wooden door of his playhouse to her.

“It’s not _nice!_ ” Lyanna screeches at him.

“It’s _mine!_ You can’t come in without my permission.”

“So give me permission then! I’m your cousin.”

“You’re not a _Stark!_ ”

“I _am!_ My mother is Sansa _Stark!_ ”

“Did we fight like that? I can’t remember,” Arya says dryly, and Sansa laughs.

“I think we may have,” Sansa says. “Might still, in some cases,” she shoots Arya a look, and Arya shrugs.

Bran looks up from the letter. “Well, I’d say you’re somewhere between the two of them and what Lord Manderly sent me.” He heaves a sigh.

“That bad?” Arya and Sansa ask at the same time.

“Look for yourself,” Bran says, and he hands the letter to Sansa, whose face crumples into a wince after reading only one line.

“Mother!” Lyanna and Jon bellow across the godswood at the same time, and Arya rolls her eyes and gets to her feet. She’ll read the letter later, she’s sure.

“Oh, you’ve done it now!” Jon says gleefully. Her boy is five years old now, and whipsmart. He has Gendry’s face and Arya’s eyes, and he is already a handful since he has both of their stubbornness.

“Jon,” she says, putting on her mother voice. “Why won’t you let your cousin into your fort?”

“It’s my fort,” he says. Arya crosses her arms, waiting. “I don’t _want_ her!”

“Why not? She’s your blood.”

“She’s a _girl_.”

Arya’s eyebrows fly up and Jon looks embarrassed. “There’s nothing wrong with girls,” he says quickly. “But it’s a boy’s fort. It’s for…” he bites his lip, thinking hard. Arya reaches up and unlaches the door and Lyanna scrambles up. Jon pouts at her.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” she tells him. “If you’d had a good reason I’d have listened, but you didn’t, and you’re a Stark. You must always have a good reason for doing something. Besides—it’s not kind to distress your cousin.”

“I’m sorry cousin,” Jon mumbles.

Lyanna sticks her tongue out at Jon. “And you,” Arya says, turning to her, “Gloating is hardly the way to make this better. I won’t always be around to talk sense into my son. You can’t always rely on your mother to fix it.” She shakes her head. “You were both playing so well this morning. I don’t understand what happened.”

“She called father a bastard,” Jon says hotly.

“I did not!” Lyanna says, but she’s got the same look in her eyes as when Sansa lies.

Arya narrows her eyes at Lyanna, and she looks as sheepish as Jon had a moment before. “I’m sorry, Aunt Arya. I’m sorry Jon.”

“I’m sorry Gendry, I think you mean,” Gendry says from behind Arya, making her start in surprise. He doesn’t look angry though. He looks at little Lyanna for a moment.

“I’m sorry Uncle Gendry,” she says dutifully.

“Well, that’s that,” Gendry says. “Jon. Don’t lock your cousin out of your fort.”

“Yes father.”

Arya takes Gendry’s hand and behind them she hears Lyanna ask, “Why do you have a pile of pinecones?” and Jon’s excited reply of “To throw at stray grumpkins!”

“It’s amazing how far children’s voices will carry,” Gendry says as he sits down with Sansa and Arya.

“Could you hear them from the yard?”

“Yes,” he says. “Distracting some of the new guards I’ve been training.” He shakes his head.

“Any word from Rickon?” He and Steffon were riding down to see Sansa and Lyanna and little Catelyn asleep in her basket.

“Nothing yet, but I imagine they’ll be here soon,” Gendry says. Arya leans against him.

Across the godswood, she hears Jon let out a howl like a wolf, and Arya blinks, then looks up at Gendry. He looks down at her and kisses the top of her head, as Lyanna also lets out a wolfy howl.

Arya opens her mouth and howls as well, just as loud as her son’s, and next to her, Gendry laughs.

 


End file.
